


The Trip to Harbour

by ColdColdHeart



Series: The Key to Oslov [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Aristocracy, Blow Jobs, Break Up, Class Differences, Cultural Differences, Dubious Consent, Dystopia, Embarrassment, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Forced Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Imprisonment, M/M, Makeup Sex, Mentions of Underage, Original Slash, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, They'll End Up Together But It Won't Be Fast, Threesome - M/M/M, Tilrey Gets to Save Gersha This Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-12-26 01:23:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 101,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18272933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdColdHeart/pseuds/ColdColdHeart
Summary: Gersha and Tilrey were supposed to take the trip of a lifetime together. Then everything went wrong.It's their first time outside Oslov, their first time feeling a warm breeze on their faces or walking barefoot in the grass. Their first time in a place where the iron rules of meritocracy don't apply. But while Tilrey is exhilarated by the freedom, Gersha's scared stiff. Given what he recently learned about Tilrey, he's afraid to let him out of his sight, even to go on a risky classified mission. Afraid enough to do something risky himself.Then there's the small issue of the bed they're being asked to share ...This story may be novel-length, with (probably) twice-weekly updates, also postedon Tumblr.





	1. Prologue: Just Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> The prologue to this story takes place midway through [Chapter 8](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664425/chapters/42435956) of "I'll Be Watching You" and fills in a missing scene before returning briefly to the action of the other story, but from Tilrey's POV. In other words, it takes place pre-breakup. The next chapter will take us to post-breakup and Harbour. :) ["The Days After"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132626/chapters/42871982) fills in the immediate aftermath of the breakup.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and for all kudos, bookmarks, and comments! You folks are the best. <3

“I imagine you wonder why you’re here,” Councillor Albertine Linnett said.

“Yes, Fir’n.” Tilrey had sat when she offered him a chair, but he would have felt more comfortable standing at attention. Albertine’s resemblance to her father, Malsha, always unnerved him, and it didn’t help that she’d summoned him to the Int/Sec complex for this second interview. The room was a perfectly ordinary office on the first level, far from the detention cells, but he still didn’t like the cold heaviness of the concrete walls.

The Councillor crossed her legs, her right hand fidgeting with a small object on her desk—an artifact? Tall and slender, with close-cropped red-gold hair like her daughter’s and hooded eyes, she usually had an air of majestic serenity, but now she seemed on edge.

Did she know about him and Vera? Tilrey wondered. Perhaps so, if Tollsha Linden hadn’t kept his mouth shut. But even if Albertine did know about his recent dalliance with her daughter, he somehow doubted she’d care.

After all, Vera was practically glowing with pregnancy now, and she appeared to have mended things with her husband. A few nights ago at the Restaurant, Tilrey had watched the couple and Vera’s parents having a seemingly pleasant dinner—at least until Gersha found pleasanter ways to distract him. The memory brought a faint flush to his cheeks.

“I’m going to put you in a difficult position,” the Councillor said. “I understand you have a close relationship with Councillor Gádden, both professionally and personally. Thanks to his recommendation, I feel comfortable putting my trust in you.”

Tilrey bowed his head and kept his face earnest. Where was this going? “I’m honored, Fir’n.”

Albertine weighed the thing in her hand—a stone? A pottery shard? “What I need to tell you today is classified for reasons touching the security of the Republic. You will divulge it to no one, not even to Gersha. Is that understood?”

Tilrey nodded, while his cheeks warmed again with confusion. “I thought Gersha—Fir Gádden—had a high security clearance, Fir’n.”

“Not high enough for this.” Albertine set the object down with a thud like iron. “Fir Bronn—Tilrey—I must ask you a few uncomfortable questions and request frank answers. First: Are you aware that my father, who was exiled by the Republic’s decree, is alive in Harbour?”

Normally Tilrey would have denied knowing this. To acknowledge that an exile had managed to evade his fate was practically treason in itself. But she was looking straight at him, her hazel eyes cool, and he was fairly sure no lie would sneak past her. “Yes, Fir’n. I am aware. The late Fir Verán told me.”

He didn’t mention that he’d begged Verán for the truth and backed up the begging with a blow job, because he’d needed to know if Malsha was still alive. Those days were mortifying to remember. He wasn’t even sure who he’d been then, only that he’d _missed_ the old sadist for quite a while.

_It wasn’t so easy to shake me, was it?_ Malsha’s voice whispered in his head. Tilrey still heard it from time to time, though much less often in the years since he’d known Gersha.

Albertine didn’t look surprised. “And are you aware that my father found refuge in the territory of a certain Colonel Thibault, who poses an ongoing threat to the Duke of the Free City of Bettevy, our ally?”

Tilrey remembered Egil asking him about a “Colonel Thibault” during his long-ago first interrogation, and he knew that Bettevy bordered a much larger realm with which it maintained an uneasy truce. “I have heard whispers of that, Fir’n.”

The Councillor planted her elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Until now, we’ve heard nothing from my father. We never sought communication with him.” Her expression was grim, with something unreadable in it. “Personally, I allowed myself to hope the man was dead. Perhaps you did as well.”

Was she trying to gauge where his loyalty lay? With her father or with the Republic? Tilrey gazed straight at her, aiming for the guileless look he’d mastered long ago, and told the truth: “Your father wielded a considerable influence in my life, Fir’n Linnett. Immediately after he left, I regretted his absence, but now I feel as you do.”

“He was a powerful personality.” Albertine’s tone gave nothing away, but her face revealed layers of grief, fear, ambivalence. Tilrey wondered what sort of influence the old sociopath— _yes, that’s what you were_ —had wielded over his own daughter. Did she sometimes hear Malsha’s voice in her head, too?

She went on briskly, “Five days ago, the Duke of Bettevy received a messenger from Thibault’s territory—Resurgence, they call it. The messenger bore a letter penned by my father, addressed confidentially to me.”

Tilrey stared at her, feeling his prized control slipping away. _You’re alive then, Malsha, you bastard. What are you up to now?_

Albertine said, “The letter was short and written without the knowledge of Colonel Thibault. In it, my father claimed to possess knowledge vital to Oslov’s security. He offered to identify traitors within our highest ranks.”

_Shit._ Tilrey forced his face to show nothing. That must mean Besha, who’d served as Linnett’s tool and aided his treason. But why would Linnett suddenly decide to rat on his former ally? Or were there other traitors Tilrey didn’t know about?

His mind was working so fast it took him a few seconds to register Albertine’s next words: “My father offered to pass on this knowledge—but only to you.”

A shudder gripped Tilrey; he held tight to the edges of the chair. “Why to me? How would he know I—?”

“—already planned to come to Harbour?” The Councillor’s eyes were hooded again. “I doubt he did, unless Resurgence has well-placed spies in Bettevy. No, Fir Bronn. The language of my father’s letter suggests he hopes to trade his information for the prospect of seeing you again. He expressed curiosity about what you’ve ‘been up to,’ as he phrased it, and an interest in your welfare.”

Tilrey felt sweat beading under his collar. “I have no interest in reuniting with a traitor,” he said too loudly.

“Of course.” Albertine’s eyes were watchful. “I understand that such a meeting may stir up unpleasant memories for you. And that’s why, rather than ordering you to comply, I am asking for your sincere input on the matter.”

Tilrey opened his mouth, but no words came out. The right answer was obvious: _Of course, Fir’n. I’d be honored to serve the Republic, Fir’n._ But what if he didn’t feel honored, or even willing?

“You’ll forgive me some hesitation, Fir’n,” he said. “But it’s rare that a Councillor other than Fir Gádden asks me for my ‘sincere input’ on anything.”

“Really?” She arched a brow. “I may not be much in the loop when it comes to Island dynamics, but it’s my impression that Besha and Davita both take counsel from you and respect your opinion.”

Why did she have to be so damn observant? Somehow he’d mistaken her remoteness for absent-mindedness. “I’m sure those two Councillors could assure you I always know my place, Fir’n.”

Albertine was starting to look impatient. “My father had many bad qualities, but he had at least one good one: he recognized merit in people of all Levels. I’ve done you the courtesy of giving you a choice about this mission; now do _me_ the courtesy of not pretending you don’t think you deserve one.”

_You’ve given me a choice. How generous._ Yet part of him couldn’t help being elated by the responsibility she was offering him. “Tell me how this would work.”

“After a ten-day in Bettevy—four days at the Embassy, six at the Duke’s palace with Gersha—you’d travel across the lake to Resurgence. For security, you’d be accompanied by one of our own special forces sergeants and several of the Duke’s retainers, all of you armed and dressed as Harbourers to avoid attracting attention. We’d feed Gersha a pretext for your side-trip. The whole journey, there and back, should take no more than a ten-day, and ideally half that. You would stay no more than a night at my father’s estate.”

As she outlined the scenario, Tilrey’s trepidation bled away, replaced by something more like the excitement of a child hearing a story of Feudal times. _Lake, palace, estate,_ Harbourer clothes—all these things were tantalizingly difficult to visualize. And _armed_ —would they actually give him a weapon, something only soldiers could carry within Oslov borders?

He wouldn’t enjoy deceiving Gersha, of course. As for dealing with Malsha Linnett again—well, he’d survive that. Besha’s safety was at stake, and Besha was Tilrey’s ally, which meant he had to intercept the exile’s message. What he’d do with it, how he’d avoid transmitting it to Albertine—well, he’d figure those parts out.

For now, the idea of being on his own in the wilds of Harbour—or nearly on his own—captured his imagination. Tilrey remembered the geographic coordinates he’d memorized and conveyed to the True Hearthers in Thurskein. They marked a clandestine air strip, and now a secret settlement of Oslov defectors, if he’d understood his friend Dal’s hints correctly. A few years ago, he’d ferreted out a map, using Gersha’s access, and found the spot: in the thick of a wild forest located across a long, thin body of water from Bettevy. A _lake._

What if he could go there and see for himself what the True Hearthers were up to? It was too risky, he chided himself. Still, the notion was intoxicating. To explore an alien landscape without worrying about freezing to death for once in his life. To be _free_.

Albertine was still talking: “There will be risk, of course. In Harbour, there always is. The plains and forests may look safe and even hospitable to you, but they’re just as dangerous as our Wastes, only for different reasons. You’d have to know better than to wander off on your own.”

“Of course, Fir’n.” Suddenly it felt so easy to say yes. “I’ve hiked and skied in the Southern Range. I know how to be careful.”

“I’m sure you do. But the Southern Range is one thing, and Harbour is another. You’ve only experienced it in books.”

_And I want more._ Tilrey was bursting with hunger to see all those mysterious places, to _know_.

If only he could do it all with Gersha, the two of them blissfully alone the way they’d been in those ruins in the Southern Range. But no, he couldn’t tell Gersha about this. At least they’d be able to experience Bettevy together.

And maybe, once they were both safely home, he could whisper all his classified adventures into his lover’s ear as they lounged in bed. Maybe.

He said, “I would be honored to do this service for the Republic, Fir’n. I only hope to be worthy of the trust you’ve placed in me.”

***

The work-day was nearly over when the interview ended, and Tilrey was in no shape for work anyway. Taking the lift and the stairs up from Int/Sec, finding the nearest tram platform, he moved half in a trance. Snow might be glaring all around him, and freezing wind whistling in his ears, but his inner eye still saw forests, lakes, palaces. Flowers. _Green._

He reached the platform just behind a low Upstart who appeared to be equally entranced—or, more likely, sapped or drunk. The man weaved a bit as he walked, then stopped abruptly on the edge of the platform, graceless as a factory robot.

The tram floated toward the platform, and the crowd pressed forward. Letting it carry him, Tilrey found himself nearly abreast of the Upstart at the moment the man took a step—not into the tram, which was still a meter or so away, but into midair.

Tilrey didn’t think, just lunged forward to seize the Upstart by the back of the jacket. He yanked the slight man backward, away from the brink, and grasped him around the waist to hold him upright. “It’s okay, Fir. You’re okay. That was a close call.”

Regaining his equilibrium, the young man struggled out of Tilrey’s grip and gave him a nasty, almost offended look. He was small and pale, his eyelids scarlet with irritation, and something about him was familiar, but Tilrey couldn’t place it. “I’m fine,” he snarled.

_And you’d be dead if I hadn’t been here, asshole._ But this was an Upstart, and he was a Drudge, so Tilrey didn’t press the point. He shrugged, feeling all the restrictions and indignities of real life press down on him again. Reproaching himself for dreaming of adventure, of freedom, he stepped past the indignant Upstart into the waiting tram, hoping the man would have the sense not to walk off the next platform he encountered. Anyway, Tilrey wouldn’t be there to save him.

“Okay, Fir,” he shot over his shoulder. “Just look where you’re going next time.”


	2. Warm

Nearly three hours into the flight to Harbour, a gentle touch on Gersha’s knee woke him from shallow sleep.

“Are you sure you don’t want a look, Fir?” Tilrey asked from the windowseat. “It’s starting to be all green down there, but it’s dusk, so soon you won’t see a thing.”

Gersha shook his head, swallowing against the nausea that was never far away when he flew. “That’s all right.” He tried to smile, to show Tilrey he did appreciate the gesture; nothing good could come of open hostility between them. “I’ll let Harbour surprise me in the morning. Anyway, I’ve watched the orientation films.”

“So have I.” Tilrey returned his gaze to the window. “But it’s not the same.”

Wasn’t it? Gersha woke his handheld and went back to his study of the briefing documents, hunching a bit to make sure Tilrey couldn’t see the screen over his shoulder. But his secretary seemed completely mesmerized by whatever was down there.

Not that the screen was full of sensitive information. It was all names and titles he was expected to memorize: _Elbertus Rickerton, maternal first cousin of Duke Dalziel, freeholder of Essex Parish. Kelvina Blaisdell, Lady Jericho, daughter of Elder of the Well Angvin, angling to marry her third son, Gerard, to the Duke’s second daughter, Savina._

How on earth was he supposed to remember all these names, titles, and relationships? And would they really help him persuade the Duke of Bettevy to allow Oslov to establish a garrison in his capital, when doing so might put the Duke’s currently neutral country in the cross-hairs of war?

Then again, Resurgence, on the other shore of the lake, was showing dangerously expansionist and pro-technological tendencies. If Colonel Thibault decided to push east, the Duke might have to choose a side whether he liked it or not, helpless against the forces of a more advanced rival.

“We believe you can establish a stronger rapport with Dalziel than the Ambassador has,” Albertine Linnett had insisted during his briefings. “Like you, he’s a scholar of the Tangle and the ancients. You’re about his age, similar in responsibilities and choice of companions. You can meet him on common ground.”

Then she’d said other things—absurd things about how Gersha was attractive and earnest and charming and generally not the sort of stuffy, uptight Oslov envoy the Duke was used to dealing with. And the whole time she was complimenting him, Gersha wanted to say, _You want Tilrey, not me. Every bit of charm I have I’ve learned from him._

He’d held his tongue, and that was just as well, because now he had to be sure not to leave Tilrey alone with the Duke or anyone else who mattered. Just in case.

It had taken Gersha nearly three years to absorb the reality that his friend Ranek Egil was a traitor—not just to know it, but to believe it. His mind was weak, he knew, and his heart was weaker. In Tilrey’s case, once that little Int/Sec flunky had tipped Gersha off, all the clues had lined up immediately, making the conclusion unavoidable. On a deep level, it made sense for Tilrey to fight the system that had made him what he was when Gersha met him.

Gersha could understand, he told himself. He could even empathize. But he’d been born to take and bear responsibility for the Republic, and the idea of toppling the government, endangering every Oslov citizen, was a wall he couldn’t climb. What had Oslovs been before Whyberg? Tribes killing each other at the whim of warlords, like most Harbourers now.

He imagined the Sector’s granite monoliths lying broken on the ground, Redda reduced to a barren snowfield whipped by the winds. Meritocracy might not be perfect, but what was the alternative? A return to the byzantine democracies of the Tangle? Those experiments hadn’t ended well, either.

He glanced over involuntarily and found Tilrey still glued to the window, now full of sapphire twilight.

He hadn’t been impressed by the orientation films. Yes, the landscape of Harbour was practically furry with greenery at this time of year, but how was that so different from the taiga of the Southern Range in the summer? A greater proportion of deciduous trees and shrubs, Gersha supposed, and a longer growing season. Fewer reminders of just how tenuous human survival was.

_Stay on mission. No aesthetic distractions._ Yet he couldn’t help wondering what Tilrey was seeing.

***

They landed in darkness, Gersha keeping his eyes closed and gritting his teeth the whole way down. At some point, Tilrey reached for his hand, just as he had on every flight to the Southern Range. Gersha didn’t pull away. Better to fake the status quo for the benefit of their fellow passengers, and yes, maybe that grip steadied him.

When they were finally on the blessed ground, Tilrey let him go. Gersha opened his eyes to find Albertine Linnett peering down at him. “Doing all right, Councillor?”

“Just fine.” He hoped she couldn’t see the cold sweat slicking his temples.

“Well, get ready.” She smiled in a relaxed, almost jaunty way. “There’s a reason we left our outergear back in Redda.”

Gersha puzzled over this as they lined up and shuffled out of the plane. He knew, of course, that early September in Bettevy reached temperatures unknown in Oslov. That was why they were wearing a lighter version of their usual indoor clothes, with synthetics replacing wool. But what was there to “get ready” for?

He understood when he stepped through the bulkhead, and a warm breeze slapped his face.

Gersha stopped in midstep, tottering. He was grateful when Tilrey’s arm shot out to keep him from tumbling down the stairs.

The air was not just warm; it was moist and heavy like a steam room. And it smelled—of fuel oil and electrical charge and things Gersha couldn’t begin to identify. _Should_ outdoor air carry so many smells? No. It was wrong, it was disturbing, it was polluted—

He was holding up the line. He focused hard on the tarmac below him—sterile and safe—and allowed Tilrey to guide him to the bottom. At least the darkness kept the young Upstarts behind him from seeing him blush.

“First time’s never easy, I hear,” one of them muttered cheekily to the other.

Tilrey said, “Here we are, Fir.”

They walked up the runway through the living, teeming air. Gersha kept his eyes down, wincing at the flutter of something like tiny, gauzy wings near his face. _Insects. You know about those._ He didn’t dare swat it away, and he was relieved to see they were headed for a square concrete shack attached to the hangar.

Inside the building, the smells vanished instantly, and his chest loosened. A heavy door slid shut with a loud click. Banks of fluorescent lights came to life above them, illuminating a red line on the floor. “Line up, everyone,” said Albertine, her voice echoing. “No need to order yourselves by Level.”

The air was still and pristine in here, perhaps artificially cooled. It made up for the awkwardness of lining up alongside his fellow visitors.

Besides him, Tilrey, and Albertine, there were ten of them. Three soldiers came commanded by a grizzled, grumpy sergeant named Gavril something. During their briefings, Albertine had referred to this contingent as “bodyguards,” who would take full responsibility for his and Tilrey’s safety. “Not that we don’t trust the Duke’s guards, of course, but they’re not as well equipped.”

Next came a motley trio: a low-level Sector Admin, a nutritionist, and a Laborer cook, who together would perform the annual audit of the trade in Harbourer foodstuffs. All middle-aged, they looked bored. Finally, three young Upstart Diplomats stuck together, whispering and occasionally cackling; they were either starting a stint at the Embassy or training for one.

Tilrey had released Gersha’s arm when they reached the building, but he stayed close by, and Gersha couldn’t deny he found the hulking presence reassuring. “I thought we’d proceed directly to the Embassy,” he said for Tilrey’s ears alone.

“Maybe there are procedures they haven’t told us about, Fir.”

A door opened opposite the one they’d come in by. Four soldiers stepped through it and saluted Albertine. They wore the familiar red uniforms, but two of them had rolled up their sleeves.

Gersha had no time to wince at this breach of protocol before the captain barked, “Take your right boots off, Fira.”

Gersha glanced at Albertine—why hadn’t she mentioned this at the briefings?—but she only said, addressing the group, “Standard procedure, Fira. Boots and socks off, please.”

The Laborers obeyed without a murmur. The Upstarts grumbled a little, but they all presented their bare feet. Gersha exchanged a confused glance with Tilrey as a soldier knelt before each of the first three people in line. Each soldier had a toolkit, from which he or she pulled a blinking plastic circlet.

They were tracking anklets, the sort that criminals on probation or people in moral rehab wore. Gersha felt his cheeks burn as he realized they were _all_ going to wear them—yes, even Albertine had presented her ankle. What sort of ignominy was this? Why hadn’t he been warned?

“They don’t want us to run.” Tilrey’s voice, low and close to his ear.

“Run?” Gersha tried to wrap his mind around the concept. Where could they run to when Redda was thousands of kilometers away?

“Make a break for it.” The soldiers were working their way down the line. Tilrey’s voice became a hiss. “Refuse to go back. _Defect._ ”

It still made no sense. Who would do such a thing? Why didn’t Int/Sec trust them to be rational? And who used words like ‘defect’—shirkers? Gersha tried not to think too hard about that, and then not to flinch as the soldier’s rough hands locked the plastic cuff around his ankle.

If he had any consolation, it was that Tilrey was being tracked, too.

***

_They’re worried about us—all of us, high and low. They think we could defect._ The realization made Tilrey’s blood pound as he submitted his ankle to the soldier. And they hadn’t been warned of this precaution in advance, which meant Int/Sec kept it classified.

That damned sergeant kept giving him the eye. All through the flight, he’d been staring at Tilrey across the aisle. Granted, the man looked more irritated than insinuating, so perhaps he was merely resenting his assignment to shepherd Tilrey on the classified mission to Resurgence.

Tilrey hoped so; he wasn’t in the mood for being seduced or seducing anyone. Hadn’t he done enough of that back in Redda? Right now, all he wanted to think about was the brief taste of Harbour he’d just gotten: the wind, the humidity, the smells of ozone and vegetation. _No wonder they’re afraid we’ll wander._

The anklet fastened with a cold click, and the soldier pressed a panel to activate it. As Tilrey tugged his boot back over it—a loose, light simulated suede one, similar to his indoor boots in Redda—he realized what this meant. They would track him throughout his mission, putting a side trip to find the True Hearthers out of the question.

He should have known—and now he wondered how he’d ever dreamt he’d do something so reckless. He couldn’t risk abandoning his responsibilities back in Oslov.

He summoned those responsibilities in his head, reminding himself how important they were. _Bror and Mirella. Besha, Davita. Your mother. Dal._ But they already felt as tiny and distant as the mysterious landscapes he’d seen from the plane. Without his partnership with Gersha, his life at home frayed into meaninglessness.

What had he been doing since Gersha threw him out? Flailing, punishing himself. Now, at last, in this new place, he had a sense of direction. He felt renewed, ready to hike or jog for days. Maybe even ready to _run_.

He extended a hand to help Gersha, who’d just finished struggling with his own boot, rise to his feet. “They’re thorough, aren’t they, Fir?”

***

The anklet chafed against Gersha’s skin. Another brief walk brought them through the strange, soupy outdoors into the Embassy complex, where the cold of thick concrete walls and conditioned air closed reassuringly around them once more.

The single floodlight hadn’t shown Gersha much of the Embassy exterior. But once inside the atrium, he could see it was three stories tall and stubbornly Oslov in every detail of its construction, from the blocky functionality to the bleary fluorescents.

People were still grumbling about the anklets, anticipating a warm meal and bedtime. While the trade-auditing trio would proceed immediately to Bettevy tomorrow, and the Diplomats would remain at the Embassy, Gersha, Tilrey, and the four Reddan soldiers would stay here for four days of “acclimatization” before proceeding to the city proper and the Duke’s residence.

There they would be the Duke’s guests for nearly fifteen days—a gesture that was vital to building trust. “The Bettevans pride themselves on their hospitality,” Albertine had explained, “and they feel a bit insulted by the way we tend to hole ourselves up in our Embassy. Don’t worry—the Duke’s palace is quite sanitary, as such things go there. Everything’s vetted.”

What did ‘quite sanitary’ mean? Gersha wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

A middle-aged admin type emerged from the other end of the atrium, rubbing his plump brown hands. Gersha recognized Rheis Grimharn, the Ambassador, though he was mildly shocked to see that the man wore his sleeves rolled up and his tunic unbuttoned. Such disarray would have been a scandal in the Sector.

Grimharn made a beeline for Gersha and clasped his hand, beaming. “Welcome, Councillor! What an honor to have you here in our humble little outpost.”

Gersha bowed stiffly, wondering if Grimharn had to wear an anklet, too. “Likewise, Ambassador. What an honor to see the place at last.”

“Well, you can’t _see_ much right now.” Grimharn chuckled, his eyes passing from Gersha to Tilrey. “And who’s this?”

Gersha was far too attuned to the way other men sized up his lover—his _secretary_ —not to bristle a little. “My secretary, Tilhard Bronn,” he said, and proceeded to detail Tilrey’s credentials as an expert in Tangle literature at mind-numbing length, as if he could thereby convince the Ambassador that his companion wasn’t also mindblowingly good in bed.

_It’s not that I’m jealous_ , he told himself primly. No, he just didn’t want Tilrey getting too close to the Ambassador, who already didn’t strike him as very discreet or cautious for a Diplomat. That was all.

“Of course, of course. Let me show you both to your rooms.” The Ambassador swept out of the atrium into a side passage, pointing out landmarks as they went. “There are the stairs, in case you prefer them to the lift. There are our conference rooms. And here—”

He thrust a door open. The humid, alien air rushed in—beside them, all around them. Gersha nearly choked. With the air this time came noises—strange, high-pitched chirpings and keenings that seemed to burrow under his skin.

The Ambassador pulled the door closed, his gaze tight on Gersha. The eerie chorus ceased.

“That,” Grimharn said, “is our courtyard. Surrounded on all sides by the Embassy, completely secure. A little sample of Harbour for you to practice on.”

“What . . .” Gersha was awash in sweat; he couldn’t find words.

Tilrey’s hand brushed his arm, bringing him back to reality. “What are those sounds, Fir Ambassador?” he asked as if reading Gersha’s mind.

The Ambassador laughed—full-throated this time. “Seasonal insects,” he said. “They breed in wet spots and trees. Never fear, Fir Councillor, you’ll get used to them—at least until they start biting you.”

And, no doubt quite aware that Gersha’s sweat had gone cold and shivers were racking up and down his spine, Grimharn led them on down the passage to the lift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! We're in Harbour. I'm excited about this story, but at the same time I have all kinds of misgivings about leaving Oslov, even temporarily. Anyone else ever read the _Gormenghast_ trilogy? Gormenghast is such a unique, special setting that, for me anyway, it was almost impossible to read the last book, where Titus leaves the castle, because it just didn't feel the same. I'm not comparing myself to Peake or anything, but Oslov has a similar self-enclosed quality in my head. We'll see how this works, though. Thanks so much for reading! <3


	3. Green

His first morning in Harbour, Tilrey couldn’t sleep.

His room was climate-controlled and sealed, the single slit of window tightly shuttered, but somehow the dawn still penetrated his dreams. He rolled out of bed and pulled the shutter askew.

The glass was heavy and tinted, yielding a frustratingly distorted view, but he had an impression of trees spreading out below in all directions, as if the Embassy were perched on a hilltop. And the sky was _bright_.

Breakfast didn’t start for another hour, so he showered quickly in the communal bathroom down the hall, trying to ignore the tracker blinking on his ankle. He dressed in his new, lighter clothes and took the stairs down to the first floor and the door the Ambassador had shown them last night, the one that led to the courtyard.

He hesitated, but only briefly, to savor his excitement. He knew he should probably be nervous, the way Gersha clearly had been, but all night the memories of those smells, those sounds, had danced at the edges of his dreams. Like a kid risen early to unwrap a long-promised present, he threw open the door.

_Green._ Not the greens he knew: the sober tints of spruce and cedars, or the flinty green of the sea and Gersha’s eyes. No, this was an intense, vibrant green shot through with golden light.

For a few seconds he stood just staring, processing the blur of brightness into distinct objects. There were three deciduous trees almost as tall as the walls of the Embassy, plus several smaller ones—trees, bushes, and thick green grass _._ Gravel paths stretched toward the courtyard’s center. The air was full of trills and warbles, and as he watched, a scuffle above his head stirred the tree limbs.

Tilrey knew birds from the Southern Range, of course, particularly ravens, but he’d never seen or heard them quite so manic. Keeping a wary eye on the tree where they appeared to be gathering, he set out down the nearest path.

It took only a few paces to reach the center of the courtyard, where concrete benches circled a sunken pool that mirrored the sky. And on one of those benches, half hidden behind a bush, doubled up and hugging his knees, sat Gersha.

Tilrey gave a start at the sight of him, but Gersha didn’t look up. He was rocking rhythmically, his eyes closed and his lips moving, though no words emerged. His cheeks were pale and sheened with sweat.

Had he come out and then lost his nerve? “Fir. Gersha!” Tilrey sat down beside him. When Gersha didn’t react, he took careful hold of the Councillor’s shoulders and stilled his motion.

Gersha’s eyes remained closed, his breathing shallow, shudders traversing his body. Tilrey said his name again. Remembering all the times his lover had woken him from his own nightmares, he gave Gersha’s cheek a gentle pat and unfolded his body gingerly from its contortions. “It’s all right. You’re fine.”

When Gersha’s feet touched the ground, his shivering increased. His eyes opened, wild on Tilrey’s, and he began to struggle. “I can’t—”

“Shhh.” Ordinarily, Tilrey would have backed off, but he could tell it wasn’t his hands Gersha was reacting to. The Councillor seemed not to want his boots to touch the earth, which was bare and soft around the benches. Keeping a firm hold on him, Tilrey worked them round so Gersha was stretched full length, head in his lap.

“It’s all right.” He scanned the courtyard for possible observers, but for now they were alone. “Nothing here can hurt you. Why’d you come out by yourself?”

Gersha hid his face against Tilrey’s jerkin, but he’d stopped resisting. “I thought . . . I don’t know. I wanted to face this place. I thought I could conquer it.”

“There’s nothing to conquer here, Fir. Nothing’s threatening you.” Tilrey smoothed the damp curls off Gersha’s forehead.

“I _know_ that.” Gersha’s voice was tight, but he leaned into Tilrey’s touch. Fear made him as pliable as he’d ever been in their shared bed, and Tilrey wished it didn’t feel so good to take possession, even briefly, of this body again.

_He may need comfort now, but he’s not mine anymore._

“Remember the first time we went to the Southern Range?” he asked. “You were afraid to take a little hike through the woods. I had to persuade you. You talked of freezing and bears.”

After a moment, Gersha said in a croak, “Yes.”

“And it was fine. And now we’ve been on hikes twice that long.”

“Yes. I’m such a fool.”

“You’re not a fool, Fir. You just take some time to adjust.”

After a moment, Gersha eased himself out of Tilrey’s arms and sat up, though he kept his feet on the bench. “I saw _things_ down there,” he said. “Tiny creatures burrowing in the earth. I don’t even have names for them.”

“Then we’ll look in the field guide.”

“Things in the earth and in the air, flying—they cause disease.”

“Yes, and you’ve been vaccinated. You know that.” Very carefully, Tilrey helped Gersha lever his boots off the bench. “One big step, and we’ll be back on the gravel, and then we’ll be inside. You can do this, love.”

“I _know_ that.” Gersha didn’t meet Tilrey’s eyes. But after another moment, he said, “I won’t be weak like this again” and rose to his feet.

“Of course you won’t, Fir.” Tilrey guided him back onto the gravel. “Now, let’s go have some breakfast.”

***

“And how do you like our accommodations, Councillor?” the Ambassador asked with his mouth full. He was plowing through a plate of Harbourer cuisine that made Gersha want to gag just looking at it: mounds of greasy eggs, porridge, and fat brown cylinders that, the Ambassador had happily informed him, were animal intestines stuffed with god-knew-what.

Gersha swallowed and tried to focus on his own porridge, which was adorned with rich, non-synthetic cream. “Very comfortable,” he said diplomatically.

“I know it’s hard to be so far from home.” Grimharn gestured at the walls of the small private room, adjoining the larger caf, where he’d invited Gersha to dine with him. “And sometimes it feels like one’s in a prison of one’s own making, you know? Still, better to be in here than out there with the riff-raff—and you have no idea what Harbourer riff-raff are like, Councillor. No one has a guaranteed sustenance here. They let people _starve_.”

Gersha shivered. He’d known what to expect in Harbour, of course—the explosion of insect and plant life; the teeming, unbridled humanity—but it was one thing to imagine and another to experience. He was grateful not to have Tilrey’s watchful eyes on him here, gauging his mental state, though he wasn’t sure that, if Tilrey hadn’t happened by, he wouldn’t still be shuddering in that courtyard.

He told himself his weakness might be a blessing in disguise if it kept them close together. Gersha needed to keep an eye on Tilrey, too, to make sure he wasn’t stepping outside the bounds of Albertine’s mission.

The Ambassador was monologuing about the perks of living in Bettevy: the fresh food (on which he rhapsodized at length), the wine, the “lovely” climate, the “mostly civilized” inhabitants.

“Just don’t use your devices in front of them,” he warned. “They’ve got strange superstitions about our tech, which is for the best because it keeps them from stealing it. And don’t ask them to find you any nice-looking boys—they frown on that. Not that you’re lacking such pleasures, with that exquisite secretary of yours.”

Gersha tried to hide his embarrassment by forcing another spoonful of porridge into his mouth. “My secretary is merely my secretary, Fir Grimharn. And I’m not here for ‘pleasures.’”

“Of course, of course,” Grimharn backpedaled, scooping up more glossy eggs. “Forgive my assumption. The lad’s eye-catching, that’s all. Don’t be offended if you catch the Duke staring at him.”

“Excuse me?” Gersha’s temples were starting to throb. He reminded himself it wouldn’t do to alienate this gossipy fool, and every shred of information about the Duke was useful. “I thought Bettevans frowned on the pleasures of men together, as you just noted.”

“Oh, officially they do, but you can’t deny nature, can you?” The Ambassador winked lewdly. “There are some who obey the prohibitions and some who only pay lip service to them. The Duke’s got a ‘secretary’ of his own, you see.”

And with that, he rose to clear Gersha’s plate and his own. “Get used to being treated like the most decadent of Feudal lords, Councillor—that’s how power is shown here. By the time you go home, you’ll be aching for cold and discipline and good old Oslov misery.”

Gersha stared at him, shocked by the word, until Grimharn’s face relaxed into a too-wide grin. “I’m joking, Councillor.”

“Of course.” But he wasn’t so sure.

***

By the evening of their second day at the Embassy, Tilrey was already itching for escape.

He’d spent most of his waking hours in the courtyard, using field guides from the Embassy’s library to identify plants, birds, insects, and more. He’d wasted nearly an hour staring at the small mammals that scampered up and down the trees, laughing in sheer delight as they chattered and brandished their glossy tails. An anthill had mesmerized him for a bit, as had the changing slants of light through the rustling leaves.

But the courtyard’s groomed attractions had their limits. He wanted more. The Embassy’s front door required a chip scan for egress, but Tilrey had gathered from caf conversation that the four soldiers had training exercises outside the building each morning and evening. After dinner, he tailed them as they slipped out through a side door.

Following, he found himself in a close-cropped field with a few outbuildings; evergreens and a tall fence closed off the horizon. The grass was lush and spongy under his boots. He stood fascinated by the panorama of a hazy blue sky, the full-throated buzz of some new insect vibrating in his ears.

“Hey! Back inside with you! Service members only out here.”

Tilrey forced his eyes to refocus on the perpetually annoyed face of Sgt. Gavril Ardaly, the ranking officer here. What was the man’s problem, anyway? If they were going to share a classified mission, presumably they’d have to learn to tolerate each other.

Maybe mild flirtation would help. He shifted subtly, opening up his posture and cocking his head, and gave the sergeant a leisurely once-over. “I’m bored in there, Fir Sergeant. Could I watch?”

Gavril Ardaly was about fifty, tall with an aquiline nose and a good head of still-sandy curls. The men and women under his command clearly respected him, and he didn’t seem like the type to have a motiveless chip on his shoulder. Yet, where most other men would have softened by now, he answered gruffly, “You’ll get your fill soon enough, lad. You’re a fucking distraction.”

The three privates under Ardaly’s command had paused in their calisthenics to stare. Tilrey wasn’t deterred. “What do you mean I’ll get my fill, Fir Sergeant?” he asked, flashing his most radiant smile. “I’m going out into the city in two days, just like you are. I’m doing my best to prepare Fir Councillor for the shock of the new environment; he’s likely to need some minding. So if you’re being trained or briefed, it would help if I could—”

The words shriveled in his throat. He stood frozen, only dimly aware that the three privates and the sergeant had gone quite still, too. All of them were gaping in the same direction.

A man had emerged from one of the outbuildings leading a red-brown animal with four spindly legs, a graceful neck, and a head that topped Tilrey’s own.

_Horse._ Tilrey had read dozens of Tangle books in which these creatures were the primary mode of transportation. He’d seen a picture or two. Yet the sight of the horse, elegant and barrel-chested at once, took his breath away.

It was gigantic, yet the man seemed completely at ease around it. He led it by an elaborate leather strap, whispering to it, and he wore a loose robe as blue as the evening sky, with braided ornaments around the waist and on the shoulders. A Harbourer.

“Stop gawking, privates!” Recovering his composure, Ardaly started barking orders again. “Line up! We’re going to learn how to approach this creature without letting it eat us. The key is to show no fear!”

The Harbourer laughed gutturally. In thickly accented Oslov, he said, “Horse don’t eat man, Fir. Other way around.”

Tilrey wagered that the horse was enough of a distraction to make Ardaly forget him, and he was right. He spent the next two hours crouching in front of the Embassy, half concealed by a hedge, watching the soldiers overcome their skittishness. One by one, they tentatively patted the animal, fed it from their palms, and even led it a few paces around the yard.

Tilrey imagined the softness of red-brown fur under his fingertips, the unsettlingly toothy mouth snuffling his hand. When the Harbourer swung himself up onto the horse, braced his feet in the leather stirrups, and rode it a turn around the yard, Tilrey barely breathed, and he suspected the soldiers didn’t, either.

That was the grand finale, after which the beast returned to its lair in the outbuilding. Tilrey trudged back inside after the others. Ardaly, as if noticing him for the first time, said, “Don’t let me see you out there again, hear? Or I tell your Fir Councillor.”

“My Fir Councillor doesn’t give a fuck, Sergeant.” Tilrey gave Ardaly a jaunty smile— _You don’t want to make friends? Fine._ —and dashed off up the stairs, light-footed with excitement.

He wanted to tell Gersha about the wonder he’d seen. But as he reached the third floor, his steps grew heavier, and when he found Gersha’s door closed, he turned away. Tomorrow at breakfast, maybe, if Gersha didn’t hide himself away with the Ambassador again. Sooner or later, his Fir was going to have to start exploring what Harbour had to offer.

***

On the second night at the Embassy, Gersha rose in the dark. He’d been having an after-dinner nap, because the blasted climate was wreaking havoc on his sleep schedule. He didn’t know what woke him, only that he woke with a single clear thought in mind: it was time for him to face that courtyard again.

_Now? In the dark?_ But, as he tiptoed down the stairs, his own words to Tilrey haunted him: he wouldn’t be weak again. In two more days they’d be staying in the Duke’s palace, right in the thick of it, with no Oslov walls to shield them. And he couldn’t let the Duke or the other Bettevans see how fucking scared he was.

For the past two days he’d been hiding in the cool, shuttered library, sometimes reading and sometimes chasing a new obsession: hacking the tracking anklets they all wore. He had just enough Int/Sec access to know where to start, and by asking Albertine a few innocent-seeming questions, he’d gotten a good handle on how to intercept the data stream with his own handheld. Now he just needed to decrypt that stream, and he’d be able to monitor Tilrey even when they were apart.

Gersha had been excited about the project when he lay down, congratulating himself on turning the indignity of the trackers to his advantage. Now, though, waking from his brief, deep sleep, he pushed thoughts of code and decryption aside. It seemed petty to surveille someone he cared about, however vital it might be to the Republic’s security and his own peace of mind. He’d still do it, of course, but for now the outdoors was a magnet that drew him, and now—

Now the whole courtyard was awash in moonlight. Gersha stood on the threshold, gazing into the impossible tangle of vegetation that reflected the pallid majesty of a full moon, and realized he’d reached the end of his courage. Staying where he was was enough. When a piece of darkness took form and strode toward him, he nearly cried out, nails biting his palm.

“Fir! I thought you were in bed for the night.”

It was Tilrey. Gersha struggled to control his breathing, glad for the concealing darkness. “I was. And you?”

“Oh, I’m out here all the time now.” Tilrey had paused at a respectful distance; he held out his hand. “Would you like to take a little walk? It’s easier in the dark.”

Gersha wasn’t so sure, but he followed Tilrey up the path, stiff-legged, till they reached the circle of benches. He would have liked to hold Tilrey’s hand, but he didn’t reach for it.

They sat down on a bench, the length of it between them, and watched the moon rise over the roof. The warbling that Gersha had heard yesterday morning was gone, replaced by the eerie keening he remembered from the night of their arrival.

“Crickets, grasshoppers, and cicadas,” Tilrey said. “Tomorrow, if you like, I can show you in the field guides. We could even bring the books out here.”

“There’s no need to . . . baby me. I’ll be fine.” Tomorrow, Gersha resolved, he’d spend _all day_ out here. Alone. Fearless.

But for now, it was a relief to see Tilrey’s silhouette against the moonlight and hear that familiar intimate dip in his voice. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Fir. The orientation vids said some people adapt faster than others.”

Gersha cleared his throat. “How convenient for you that _you_ adapt so quickly.”

He wasn’t even sure what he meant by the bitter twist he gave the words. That Tilrey’s easy acclimation to Harbour was of a piece with his shirking? That it revealed a secret hatred of Oslov at the dark pit of his heart?

But the Ambassador himself had called Oslov “misery,” and the Ambassador was no shirker. Nothing made sense here. And Gersha needed Tilrey now—his adaptiveness, his steadiness. Needed him far too much, even as he also needed to keep an eye on him.

“Oh, that’s all relative,” Tilrey answered without rancor. He sounded so _happy._ “You should have seen me a few hours ago. I was standing like an open-mouthed idiot, mesmerized by a horse.”

“A horse!” Gersha drew in his breath.

He listened as Tilrey told him about the horse, sprinkling the story with caustic asides about the soldiers and their sergeant. Gersha missed this—Tilrey’s sharp eye for absurdity, his irreverent commentary on the doings in the Council chamber.

And more. Gersha missed those arms wrapped around his waist, that strong torso on top of his, those teeth nipping his earlobe, that hair soft between his fingers, that voice rumbling, “Time to get up, love,” that tongue—oh, verdant hells, all of it. He ached with aloneness in his single bed. His whole being still vibrated at the frequency of the voice that spoke to him now.

Ever since he found out, he’d berated himself almost daily for not being able to report Tilrey. He’d heard his hated uncle’s voice in his head, haughty and disgusted: _Just like your father, weak to the core. You fall in love and you forget your position, your dignity, your very loyalty . . ._ Some nights he’d woken with a raw throat from dreams of pounding on a wall and screaming.

Now, for the first time, Gersha felt resigned to who he was and what he could and couldn’t do. A calm snuck over him—a cool hand on his brow, a voice saying, _You’re forgiven_ , though who was speaking and whether the words referred to himself, Tilrey, or both, he didn’t know.

As they sat there in the moonlight, as he listened to Tilrey talk, their hands crept closer. Tilrey’s fingers curled around the edge of the bench, stroking the rough stone. Gersha’s hand wandered off his knee and approached Tilrey’s, and he inched his body nearer, too.

They never quite touched. But by the time the moon passed the zenith, and Tilrey yawned and said, “We should get to bed,” the distance between them felt more imaginary than real.


	4. The City

Twenty minutes out from the Embassy, the ground-van whirred to a stop in a nest of tall grass. Ahead of them, Tilrey saw the city wall rise against the sky. Brick, sandstone, and granite blocks had been haphazardly mortared into a barrier at least half-again as tall as the men who guarded it at intervals, clad in violet blue with black leather breastplates. Shards of broken glass capped it, catching the pewter sunlight.

He glanced at Gersha, who sat beside him, but Gersha wasn’t looking at the wall. He was gaping at a sort of tiny tram on wheels that had pulled up beside them, drawn by two horses with massive shoulders and hooves. One of the horses nickered. The other swept its tail over its back and dropped a load of excrement in the grass. Behind them, a private giggled.

Albertine Linnett, flanking Gersha on the other side, placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “As I told you earlier, the Duke doesn’t allow motorized vehicles within city walls, so we’ll be making the rest of the trip by wagon. It’s a smoother ride than you’d think.”

Gersha looked green. Tilrey reached for his hand and gave it a brief, private squeeze.

Since that night in the courtyard, they’d had a sort of undeclared truce, an understanding that for now, at least, they needed each other. They’d eaten their meals together in the caf, pored over field guides together, and spent most of their two remaining days in the courtyard practicing Harbourer conversation.

Both evenings, Tilrey had snuck out to watch the soldiers training with the horse, blustering his way through Sergeant Ardaly’s disapproval with a cheeky grin. Otherwise, though, he’d rarely left his Councillor’s side. The goal was to make sure Gersha was properly acclimated before Tilrey left for his mission in six days. Albertine would be back at the Embassy by then, and Tilrey hated to think of Gersha left adrift among Harbourers and the rough, bluff Oslov soldiers.

The “wagon” was a solid wooden construction, open to the elements and accessible by a flight of fold-down steps. Albertine swept up those steps with easy grace, her snow-white jacket, skirt, leggings, and boots like an island of snow in the soupy southern air. She beckoned to Gersha, but he stood frozen, his throat working.

“Fir.” Tilrey climbed halfway into the wagon and held out his hand, his head bowed. After a few seconds, Gersha took hold and allowed himself to be led up the steps and seated on a bench beside Albertine, blushing furiously.

“I shall master this,” he muttered, as Tilrey and the soldiers settled themselves around him, and the Harbourer driver chirruped to his horses, clearly struggling to suppress a grin.

“Of course you will.” Albertine patted his hand. Since their arrival, Tilrey had noticed, she seemed friendlier and less serenely distant than usual, almost as if Harbour had unlocked a compartment in her heart.

“They laugh at us all, you know,” she continued in an undertone, as the wagon pulled onto the packed-dirt road. “They think we’re strange, fastidious creatures. Our fondness for our handhelds is especially mysterious to them. Don’t take it personally.”

“I hope the Duke won’t laugh,” Gersha fretted, as the horses halted before a massive gate in the wall, made of wooden slats on iron hinges.

“Oh, he will. But it’s _because_ they laugh, you see, because they don’t think much of us, that we can expect them to be cooperative. When they stop laughing, that’s when we get concerned.”

Tilrey tucked away this bit of diplomacy as the gate swung open. A moment later, he had no attention to spare for anything but his first real view of Harbour.

Or rather, of Bettevy. If he’d learned one thing from all his reading, it was that “Harbour” was the deliberately vague Oslov term for everything more or less to the immediate south: the realm from which many of them had migrated during the Unraveling. Maybe it was an old sentimental usage conveying homesickness, something the government hadn’t managed to root out. In any case, no actual residents of this continent—near whose northeastern extremity they now were—had ever called themselves Harbourers.

The city of Bettevy was built on a long slope down to the lake, and that caught his eye first: a thin belt of shimmering, sparkling blue. On the far shore, jagged purple mountains closed in the horizon. They belonged to a vast desolation called the Park, and the Park was part of Resurgence, where Malsha Linnett lived and where, so soon, he was headed.

The outlines of those mountains were so craggy and strange—so promising of adventure—that Tilrey had to force his eyes back to the near distance. Colors assaulted his eyes. The street they were clip-clopping down was lined with great heavy trees, painfully green in the sunlight—like veins in a glacier, he thought, for lack of a better comparison. The house on the next corner was _pink._ As they passed, Tilrey saw it was made of crumbling masonry like parts of the city wall.

Those pinkish bricks seemed to be a popular building material. None of the houses surpassed four stories, and some were a staid white, but their dark shutters and swooping woodwork spoke of whimsy. They had weedy yards, spacious gardens, and stables. People were everywhere, most of them wearing loose, brightly colored robes—hoeing vegetables, gossiping on corners, shooing chickens and children out of the road. Tilrey had already seen chickens cooped in the back garden of the Embassy, but here they seemed to drift where they liked.

“You’re mostly seeing servants,” Albertine said, noticing his darting eyes. “The upper levels generally stay out of sight, or they go out on horseback or bicycle to stay head-and-shoulders above the crowd.”

Indeed, some of the pedestrians wore rags so filthy they’d faded to an iron gray. Tilrey caught glimpses of toothless mouths, open sores, and small, scrawny forms. Those were kids, he realized with a shock, at an age where they ought to be locked up safely in nurseries or school dorms.

One ragged boy with an ingratiating smile ran alongside the wagon, holding out a mud-caked hat and speaking too fast for Tilrey to understand a word. The driver yelled at him, then at a man idling on the next street corner. The idler, who wore violet blue and a breastplate like the wall guards, stalked over, seized the child by the ear, and led him away. Tilrey cringed.

“Duchal police,” Albertine said. “They’re like our Constables, only they serve the needs of the Duke, which don’t necessarily reflect the will of the people.”

 _And our Constables serve the needs of our government, which don’t necessarily reflect the will of the people._ “They wouldn’t hurt a child?” he asked.

“I doubt it. The Duke’s regime is humane.” But she spoke with a vagueness that suggested there were some questions you learned not to ask here. “Here’s the Duke’s palace.”

Tilrey had been shown a single photo, enough to recognize it by but not enough to do it justice. By Oslov standards, the palace was a small building, just three floors with an even lower annex extending to one side. But its slanted black roofs soared majestically into the blue sky, accented by chimneys and sharp-pointed gables. Its porch was columned, its windows latticed. Its ground-level façade of orange-pink sandstone and its brick second level practically glowed against the expanse of emerald grass that surrounded it, punctuated by dark trees and dirty-white grazing ruminants.

“Most of these buildings date well back into the Tangle era,” Albertine said, as two guardsmen in violet blue opened the wrought-iron gate to let them through.

Tilrey brushed Gersha’s hand with his own and was gratified to see that the Councillor was gaping at the palace, too, his fears eclipsed by fascination. The sight more than made up for the bumpy ride, though Tilrey was glad for the chance to get on his feet again.

He helped Gersha and Albertine out of the wagon, then joined them at the foot of the porch, where at least ten guardsmen had lined up to bow ceremoniously to the Oslovs. Sergeant Ardaly saluted back and motioned his soldiers to do the same, his face set in a glower. Special forces or not, Tilrey thought, the man didn’t seem to have much experience with Harbourers; he looked painfully self-conscious.

The guardsmen withdrew in a fanlike coordinated movement, leaving three men standing alone. Two wore black suits, elaborately braided and tucked, with gleaming white ruffled collars and shiny black boots. The third was dressed similarly but in spruce-green velvet, and it was he who stepped forward.

“Fir’n Councillor, what a pleasure!” He spoke Oslov, with a nearly flawless accent, yet there was nothing Oslov about the fluid way in which he reached for Albertine’s hand and brought her fingertips to his lips. “And is this Fir Councillor Gádden?” he asked, swinging to face Gersha, his eyes meeting Tilrey’s briefly on the way. They were dark, intelligent, curious. “I’m incredibly honored.”

“As are we, your Grace.” Albertine bowed her head, looking a little stiff beside the Duke, as they probably all did. “Fir Councillor, this is Duke Dalziel of Bettevy. Your Grace, Fir Ernst Gerhard Gádden.”

Applying his inquisitive gaze to Gersha, the Duke extended a beringed hand. He was about Gersha’s age, with a lean, elegant brown face and his hair done up in a high crown of tiny braids, some threaded with beads and gemstones. He moved with an acute yet graceful consciousness of his body that reminded Tilrey of Davita Lindblom—the perfect manners of the born-to-power.

Gersha clasped the proffered hand palm-to-palm, as one does with an equal. The Duke, smiling, pumped Gersha’s hand up and down and said, “That’s how we do it here, honored Fir. Albertine tells me you speak some English?”

Gersha reddened. “I read better than I speak, I fear,” he said in awkward Harbourer. “But reading your literature is a great pleasure.”

“Yes, indeed. When Albertine and the Ambassador told me you were curious to make an inventory of my library, I was too happy to oblige.” The Duke’s narrowed eyes said he knew as well as they did that Gersha’s fondness for literature was only the pretext for this visit.

“But I forget my manners,” he went on, turning to the black-clad man on his right, who was older and heavy-set with a many-stranded silver chain around his neck. “This is Albert Fingal, my first steward. Anything you wish to know about the amenities of the palace, he’ll be honored to tell you.”

The Duke nodded to the man on his left, who was younger—in his twenties—with pale skin, a shock of black hair, and heartbreaking lips. “And this is Silas Chen-Trevanian, tutor to my daughters and my secretary. He knows the library perhaps better than I do.”

As the Duke spoke, a glance passed between him and Silas Chen-Trevanian—dignified condescension on one side, the tiniest brow raise on the other. It was such a brief exchange that Gersha might have missed it, but Tilrey didn’t.

Bettevans had a long-standing prejudice against sexual relations between men; Tilrey and Gersha had been cautioned not to express affection openly here. But if Tilrey had read the shared glance correctly, that prejudice didn’t stop the Duke from taking his pretty secretary to bed, probably on a regular basis.

As if the Duke had noticed the scrutiny, his eyes returned to Tilrey. “And would this be _your_ secretary, the one who reads our language so well?”

“Forgive me, your Grace.” Gersha hurried to introduce them.

The Duke didn’t offer Tilrey his hand, but he said, “Charmed to make your acquaintance,” and his expression was pleasant and neutral, not the half-leer that Tilrey had tolerated from the Ambassador during their stay. This man had manners, even with his inferiors.

 _Be careful_ , he reminded himself. Malsha Linnett had always been impeccably polite, too.

“The honor is on my side, your Grace.” He spoke in Harbourer, inclining his head.

The Duke’s eyes opened a little wider, as if Tilrey had surprised him. “Your accent is excellent.”

“He has a real knack for accents,” Gersha said, returning to Oslov, while Tilrey shook his head and mumbled something about his vocabulary not measuring up to his pronunciation. He listened and blended in, was all—that was how he’d lost his Thurskein accent after only a year in Redda.

The Duke’s dark, liquid eyes held his. “We must converse more. I hope to see all three of you at dinner tonight to meet my wife and daughters. For now, Silas will show you to your rooms.”

While Albertine and the Duke began a polite argument over whether she would accept his hospitality tonight or return to the Embassy, Silas bowed deeply to Gersha and led the way through a massive carved door.

Inside, the walls were paneled in intricate carvings. Tilrey stood gawking at a plush red velvet sofa on spindly legs, then at an enormous sandstone fireplace covered with a delicate bas-relief of fruit and flowers. He turned to find Gersha just as mesmerized by the glossy, red-brown banister of a right-angled staircase, the whole thing worked like a piece of Feudal art.

“Who had _time_ to create such things?” Gersha murmured, but he didn’t sound derisive, only baffled.

“This way, Fira.” Silas’s Oslov accent was rougher than the Duke’s. As he led them upstairs, Tilrey caught a flash of amusement on the young man’s face and remembered what Albertine had said: they should expect Harbourers to laugh at them.

Could they help it if they’d never seen a dwelling with so many details and surfaces and _colors_? The route to the second floor offered too many distractions: a life-sized oil portrait in a gold frame—the Duke’s great-grandfather, Silas said; a giant blue vase on a end-table; a stained-glass window that turned the outside saffron.

When they finally reached the guest room, Tilrey was so fascinated by the bay window and the crimson velvet spread that it took him a while to register the salient fact: there was only one bed.

“And where do I sleep, Mr. Chen-Trevanian?” he asked almost timidly, imagining an adjacent closet. Or were servants and retainers supposed to sleep on the floor? With a carpet this thick, it would be no hardship.

The young man gave Tilrey a puzzled look, drawing the door shut behind them. “His Grace says you two are friendly with each other,” he said in Harbourer, “and would prefer to share an accommodation. His Grace is a civilized man who respects Oslov customs and does not bow to the prejudices of the vulgar.”

“But shouldn’t we—I mean, for discretion’s sake—” Gersha gestured confusedly at the bed.

“Our servants are _very_ discreet, Fir. And accustomed to being so.” With that, Silas winked.

Gersha and Tilrey shared a glance. They couldn’t very well refuse such a courtesy.

Tilrey had braced himself for cold irritation on Gersha’s side, but to his relief, the Councillor only looked bemused. “Please tell his Grace,” he began in halting Harbourer, “that we thank him for his generosity—his sensitivity—what’s the damned word?” he finished in Oslov, looking helplessly at Tilrey.

Tilrey bowed to Silas, who was visibly suppressing a grin again. “We thank his Grace. That should do.”

“His Grace is honored by your presence. Now, allow me to show you the lavatory. We have modern plumbing here, none of the rough accommodations you’d find in your average country freehold.”

Now it was their turn to hide their amusement as Silas lectured them on the workings of primitive porcelain flush toilets. “Very impressive indeed,” Gersha said solemnly—and the young man, seemingly satisfied with this verdict, finally withdrew after a few words about “dressing for dinner” at eight.

When they were alone, Gersha deflated, throwing himself down full-length on the bed. “Do you even want to imagine what ‘rough accommodations’ are?”

“I’d rather not.” Tilrey sat down experimentally on a bruise-pink quilted sofa; it was springy. “I can sleep here.”

“Nonsense! This bed is gigantic.” To prove the point, Gersha rolled over several times till his feet hit the floor. “He expects us to share, and we shouldn’t go against his expectations in any way; we need him pliable. It won’t be any trouble, unless you’re worried I’ll . . .”

 _Try to touch you?_ But no, Gersha couldn’t mean that. It would more likely be the other way round. During their nights in the Embassy courtyard, Tilrey had repeatedly struggled with his urges to draw Gersha close and kiss the man’s delicate eyelids, bathed in moonlight.

“As you like,” he said, swallowing his misgivings. “But how are we supposed to ‘dress for dinner’? In what?”

“I suppose we’ll have to shock them by showing up as we are.”

“Personally, I think you’d look nice in that green velvet the Duke wears.”

On a purely aesthetic level, he meant it, but the idea of an Oslov wearing green was absurd. And as they laughed together, for the first time in a while, Tilrey thought sharing a bed might not be such a bad thing after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I created Oslov, about a million years ago, it was an alien planet, and Harbour was a planet in the same solar system. (There was a third planet called Almandine that was an ancient Rome rip-off.) There was this whole history of colonization and conquest between Oslov and Harbour, and for a while all the Harbourers were living in this glass city called Verdopolis, which was fun. :)
> 
> But later I decided to plunk everything down on future-Earth, which meant throwing out all my Harbour backstory and making it basically part of the U.S. with a new name imposed on it by Oslovs. That's a long way of saying this world-building is kind of from scratch, and I hope it works. Thank you for reading! <3


	5. Dinner With a View

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These next few chapters feature a lot of world building, setting stuff up, but after that we'll launch into a faster-paced narrative with actual action. And a bit of the other kind of action, too. ;) Thanks for reading!

For the Duke, “dressing for dinner” meant wearing a doublet elaborately quilted and embroidered in silver, the same spruce-green as his everyday suit. His wife and daughters showed off floor-length gowns in shades that mesmerized Gersha: magenta, glacier green, twilight mauve. Their hair was braided and bejeweled like the Duke’s, and the elder girl, Sophronisba, wore the feathers of an exotic bird jutting from her forehead.

Seeing Gersha’s eyes on her, she whispered to her sister and giggled. He lowered his gaze, blushing and hoping she hadn’t misunderstood his interest—she scarcely looked of age.

“Don’t tease the envoys, darling,” said the Duchess in an acid voice. She spoke Oslov almost as well as the Duke, and she, like her daughters, was unsettlingly young and bored.

Then again, much about this dinner was unsettling. They were sitting upright at chairs around a long table—a table _just_ for eating—rather than kneeling or lounging on couches. The table practically groaned with platters of food and a frightening array of utensils that Gersha had never used before. At the Embassy, he’d been able to stick to porridge, brown rice, and boiled fish, but here he had no choice but to pick at an unidentifiable meat in thick, dark sauce.

“I understand your trepidation, Fir Councillor,” said the Duke—who, Gersha had already decided, was far too observant. “Food-borne illness _is_ still rampant in our country, but I assure you my cooks practice modern hygienic procedures.”

Seeing that Tilrey was eating speedily beside him, Gersha forced a bite of meat into his mouth. It was deliciously tangy, and he ate another.

Another giggle came from the younger daughter, Savina. “Manners,” the Duchess reproved.

Gersha felt a blush stain his cheeks. Was he disregarding scads of table manners himself? He tried to remember the approved topics for state-dinner conversation, but nothing came to mind, and he was relieved when Albertine Linnett asked the Duke a complicated question about shipping lanes and canals.

The lake, Gersha knew, was a vital shipping lane that extended from Bettevy into its neighbor Kébec. The rising empire of Resurgence had laid claim to the desolate Park on the opposite shore, making pirates and hostile warships a recurring concern.

Framed by the picture window he faced, however, the lake was simply a ravishing beauty. The sun was setting over the rugged purple mountains, reflecting itself in the smooth mirror and setting the whole sky aflame.

He must have been gaping like a fool, because the Duchess asked, “What are you thinking about, Councillor?”

“I.” Gersha tugged his eyes away. “I was thinking, your Grace, I wonder how you manage not to stare at this view all day long.”

Sophronisba said something in Harbourer that Gersha didn’t catch, sending her sister off into gales of laughter again. Down at the foot of the table, Silas was smiling, too; though he hadn’t participated in the dinner conversation, he seemed quite comfortable with the rest of the Duke’s family.

“Girls!” said the Duke this time. He switched to Oslov, regarding Gersha apologetically: “They have it in their heads that your people are too logical to appreciate beauty.”

“Not ‘logical.’” Savina spoke in Harbourer, but Gersha managed to follow this time. “Castaways love their human gadgets too much to appreciate God’s workings.”

_Castaways._ It was a Harbourer term for Oslovs that Gersha had never heard spoken aloud till now, with a disparaging ring, as if they were defined not by what they had but by what they’d left behind. Some Bettevans used an even worse slur for them, he’d heard: _the damned._

While Tangle civilization had embraced technology, today’s Harbourers dismissed it as a curse, incompatible with their culture’s notions of ethical perfection and a supreme being. It was a strange quirk but a convenient one, as the Ambassador had noted, because it kept Bettevans from coveting the tools of power. Resurgence was dangerous precisely because Colonel Thibault had taken the opposite tack of cultivating science and engineering within her borders. She had allies to the west with whom she communicated by telegraph and primitive radio transmissions, still all but unknown in Bettevy.

The Duke and his daughter were having a fast-paced exchange now—he scolding, she rebellious. “Forgive my daughter’s rudeness,” the Duchess said, inclining her head to Gersha. But she spoke with tired formality, as if she, too, found Oslovs a bit trying.

If Gersha wanted to convince the Duke to abandon his neutrality, he reflected, he needed to appear sympathetic to the counter-intuitive beliefs of this country, or at least not scornful of them. To find common ground.

“I have been sometimes mesmerized by the view of distant mountains,” he said in slow, careful Harbourer. “Tilrey, could you tell them about the Northern Lights? I don’t have the right words.”

Tilrey described the lurid flashes in the sky, while the family listened—the Duke neutrally, the daughters skeptically, the Duchess with a slight softening in her eyes. “You do see beauty,” she said when he’d finished.

Meeting Albertine’s eye, Gersha saw a distinct note of approbation there. Maybe he was finally catching on.

The meal went on for several more courses, each of which Gersha started by picking at warily and ended by overindulging in. By the time they were finishing a sweet, puke-orange purée—“squash-flower pudding,” the Duchess specified—the window showed only a pool of black pocked with distant lights. Settlements on the lake islands, or stars? Gersha wondered.

The Duke set down his spoon and folded his napkin. “I should like to show you my library over a brandy, Fir Councillor, if it suits you.” His eyes wandered to Tilrey. “You’re both welcome.”

Gersha looked to Albertine, who nodded briskly. “Forgive me, Gersha, but I need to steal Tilrey for a minute before I return to the Embassy. A last bit of briefing for that side-trip I mentioned.”

_Side-trip._ Albertine had described it in Gersha’s own briefing as a “trip up north to photograph a supposedly well-preserved Tangle library in the town of Senjy.” She’d apologized for depriving him of Tilrey while suggesting that the separation might give Gersha more opportunities to get close to the Duke. This was all bullshit, Gersha was well aware; the “side-trip” was the classified mission to which Tilrey had confessed in a terrible moment for both of them. But Gersha had to smile and pretend he knew nothing, a burden that would have been unbearable if not for his plan to use the tracking anklet to follow Tilrey’s steps.

So he nodded, said, “Of course,” and rose and followed the Duke out of the room, trying not to glance after Tilrey as he went.

The library was on the palace’s third floor, with bookcases climbing the walls all the way to the vertiginous peaks of the gables. Rolling ladders and iron balconies offered access to the highest shelves. A flickering chandelier dangling from the ceiling filled the space with ghostly shadows.

Gersha had spent many happy hours in library stacks. The musty smell of old books set him at ease, though he had no idea how to navigate such a collection. “I wouldn’t know where to start. How do you—?” He reached for his handheld, then realized it would be useless. “Are they catalogued somehow?”

“Various ancestors of mine have made catalogues, but the one I trust best is in my head.” The Duke grinned, one hand on a ladder. “I spent my boyhood memorizing this place. Give me a subject, an author, an era.”

“Have you anything from . . . right before the Unraveling?” Gersha bit his lip. According to the Oslov authorities on such matters, books from the last few decades before the Unraveling had existed purely in digital form, and all digital data from the Tangle had been lost except for a few crucial scientific databases preserved in Oslov. But mightn’t there have been a few paper books from that period to help explain _why_? He couldn’t help his curiosity.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘right before.’” The Duke climbed the ladder with an athletic nimbleness Gersha hadn’t expected of someone so formally dressed. “Most communications from that era are lost, of course, but we do have a decent collection, if a confusing one.”

Fifteen feet above Gersha’s head, he began sliding out books, muttering to himself, putting some back and tucking others under his arm. “I’m trying to find you a few that aren’t falling apart.”

“That’s too kind of you.” Gersha fidgeted, hoping the Duke wouldn’t give Albertine a report on the books he’d borrowed. Of course, he could simply cite his research interests, couldn’t he? The Unraveling might be something about which his education had been woefully vague, but it wasn’t a _forbidden_ subject—not for a Councillor, surely. Just a pointless one.

Gersha remembered the moment in his Primary classroom—and surely everyone’s Primary classroom—when a student piped up, “What does the Unraveling mean, exactly? I mean, what unraveled?” And the teacher had answered solemnly, “The Unraveling means there is no going back. What more do we need to know?”

Her tone froze Gersha to his seat until the lunch buzzer sounded. He was afraid to look around the room, because his fellow students might see in his eyes that he, too, had wanted to know _why_.

As the Duke combed through the shelves, Gersha found himself examining the carvings that ran along the shelf edges. While the ones downstairs were clearly ornamental, these were simple patterns that suggested symbols. In fact, he recognized a few of them from Oslov, where Laborers stenciled similar symbols on walls: a lightning-bolt (“power” or “the Spark”), a fan or ripple (“the Radiance”), and a schematic smiling human face. They were remnants of some old faith system.

Here he found many more variations—not just smiling faces, but tearful, quizzical, angry, winking, and frightened ones. There were tiny stick-figure people who appeared to be vomiting, and others who appeared to be exploding, and others endowed with horns or halos.

“These hieroglyphics are so intricate,” he said, as the Duke climbed back down the ladder. “Can you read them?”

The Duke glanced at the nearest string of symbols; when his eyes returned to Gersha, they showed a slight pinch of embarrassment. “These are sacred things,” he said, as if that should close the discussion.

_Find common ground._ “For us, too—well, for some of our people.” Gersha pointed to the Spark. “The worship of this image is still alive, I believe, though it’s discouraged. People regard it as a good omen.”

The Duke smiled. “That image signifies electricity, such as powers your city. Why would people worship something they have readily available?”

_Why indeed?_ “Maybe they don’t know what it means anymore.” He touched the Radiance. “And this?”

“That’s the portal to the Light Web, Councillor.” The Duke was scrutinizing him closely now. When Gersha looked baffled, he went on, “You really don’t know what I’m talking about? Or is it just that you don’t believe?”

“I—well, I know of course the Tangle ran on a web of data.” _A network like the ones we have today, only dangerously accessible to everyone._ “But I thought considering such things—such ‘gadgets’—went against your concept of the sacred, your Grace.”

Now it was the Duke who looked baffled, and a bit scandalized. “The Light Web is not a ‘gadget.’ It’s the very definition of the sacred. But I’m no Elder, and I’m not qualified to explain. If you come to one of our Wells and see how we worship, perhaps you’ll understand.”

The idea of visiting a Bettevan religious site unnerved Gersha a little, but here was a perfect opportunity to find common ground. “Would I be allowed in,” he asked, “being one of the ‘damned’ and all?”

For an instant, the Duke just stared at him. Then he uttered a long guffaw and placed a stack of five books in Gersha’s arms.

“So you understand we have prejudices,” he said. “This is good, Councillor. Now come with me to the city’s Well when we next worship, and perhaps you’ll begin to understand that you have prejudices, too.”

***

“So,” Albertine said, as she and Tilrey walked back across the palace grounds to the entrance, “are we clear?”

“Oh, you’ve been very clear, Fir’n.” The darkness and the singing aliveness of the air made him bolder than he would have been at home. “All I have to do is obey Gavril Ardaly at every step and not attempt to make decisions for myself, and I’ll be fine.”

“That’s a free interpretation of what I said.” But she didn’t sound offended. “You’ll be in dangerous terrain, which requires military discipline, and Sergeant Ardaly is trained to handle crisis situations. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be helpless. Would you like me to give you a stash of Harbourer currency, the way I did Ardaly and Gersha?”

Tilrey crossed his arms. “Money would be helpful in case we’re separated, yes. But that’s not the point, Fir’n.”

“Then what is?”

They climbed the flagstoned steps to the terrace in silence. Perfumed, honeylike air invaded Tilrey’s nostrils—a new shrub or bush for him to research in the morning.

At the top, he stopped and faced Albertine. “ _Why_ do you think your father is offering us information? He has what he wants—his retirement in Harbour. I don’t see him trying to make a triumphant return to Oslov.” _Why would he? Everything a person can possibly want is here._ “So what’s his real motive?”

Albertine shrank away from him a little. “I learned long ago that reading my father’s motives is a losing battle. I didn’t grow up with him—he spent most of my childhood here, serving as Ambassador. Even my mother barely knew him, and they only tolerated each other for my sake.”

All this Tilrey could have guessed, yet he was still faintly flattered by her candor. “You must know your father has a . . . perverse streak, Fir’n,” he said. “He likes to tie people in knots, to tear off their wings and watch them try to fly. I saw it many times.” _And experienced it._

_I often wonder at the cruelty in me,_ Malsha had said once, after doing something that made Tilrey weep. _Torture of the body disgusts me, but torture of the soul—oh, that’s quite delicious. Perhaps you’ll understand someday._

And Tilrey _had_ started to understand, hadn’t he? Back in Redda, when he dumped the vial of sap on the floor of the private lounge and told Bors Dartán to lick it up, he’d experienced a pleasure so cold and lofty that the memory made him shiver. And then, when Dartán actually obeyed him, he’d been aroused. What was wrong with him?

“What are you saying, then?” Albertine asked, her expression obscured by the shadows. “Do you think Malsha has an ulterior motive?”

Could she be so naïve? “He _always_ has an ulterior motive. The question is, what is it?”

The question he really wanted to ask hovered in the air between them: _Does he want to torture my soul some more?_

Albertine was silent for a moment, both of them listening to the crickets chirping in the grass. Then she said, “I regret certain things in my life. One of them was not intervening when my husband first brought you to our home. I could see you were . . .”

They both knew what he’d been back then: young, frightened, coerced. Nothing he needed to be reminded of. “I don’t see the relevance, Fir’n.”

“Of course not. Only know that I want to do right by you, Tilrey. When I said you could back out of this mission, I meant it.”

He sighed. “You don’t want me to back out. Not just because the old sadist insisted on me, but because you know that if anyone can beat him at his own game, I can.”

“One hopes there will be no games involved,” Albertine said.

Tilrey only shook his head. _You’re an idealist like Gersha. But me, I understand his black heart. His anger._ It had never occurred to him before that Malsha Linnett was angry, but now, yes, he thought so. It made sense. _He_ was angry, wasn’t he?

Privately, he vowed not to make a single concession to the old sociopath.

“I trust you,” Albertine went on, her voice so steady it shamed him.

***

Upstairs in their room, a single flickering candle illuminated Tilrey’s way to bed. Gersha was already a hump under the covers, his cheek resting on an ancient volume.

The title on the spine was intriguing. Tilrey slipped into his pajamas and then, overcome by curiosity, looked around for more books. In the top drawer of a delicate bedside console, he found three brittle volumes that were clearly from the late Tangle era: the feel of the covers and smell of the paper were giveaways.

He was about to check the dates of publication when a fourth book caught his eye. This one was far more primitively produced, its pages rough with pulp and its spidery type indicating a hand-press. But the date was only 125 years ago, and the name on the flyleaf was familiar:

_The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour, by Edvard Linnett. Published in Bettevy, our Year of Light 2268._

The title was rendered in Harbourer on one side, Oslov on the other. Flipping through, Tilrey saw the rest of the book was similar. Why on earth would an Oslov publish a book here—particularly a Linnett?

When he began reading, he quickly understood. The short book was made up of elliptical fragments, some poetry and some prose, but they all reeked of Dissent:

_Without contraries there is no progression._

_We castaways try so hard to keep our contraries separate. Hártha and Harga, inside and outside, warmth and cold. But I stand here, my fellow Oslovs, in warm-blooded, yellow-veined springtime, something you know nothing of, and I have a message for you. Your ice is already inside your warmth. Your Wastes have invaded your cities. Your government is no better than Feudal tyranny. The wolf and the bear that prowl the taiga are less cruel than you._

Reading the words in Oslov, Tilrey blinked as if he’d been slapped. He set the book down, but it seemed to pulse under his hand.

“That’s a subversive text,” Gersha said sleepily. He’d propped himself up on an elbow. “Edvard Linnett was an envoy here. I just looked him up on my handheld. He was exiled more than a century ago for treason—and madness.”

“I’m not surprised.” Tilrey shoved the book back in the drawer under the other three, trying not to let on that it had affected him. Did Albertine know about her disreputable ancestor? She must.

“I apologize for snooping,” he said, blowing out the candle.

Gersha sighed and rolled to the far edge of the bed, leaving a ridiculous amount of room. “I’m not afraid of what you’ll learn from books, Rishka. Not anymore. If I wanted to hide them, I would have done it better.”

Tilrey got under the covers, leaving a decorous distance himself. As he turned his back to Gersha and said, “Good night, then,” he wondered whether the remark came from some residual trust in him, or whether Gersha just meant the damage was done.

The ornate bed turned out to be lumpy, and Tilrey woke several times during the night—or perhaps it was the curtain, flapping before the open window, that disturbed his sleep. At one point, he came awake enough to realize two things: first, it was nearly dawn; and second, his chin was resting on Gersha’s shoulder.

He froze—then began to disentangle himself inch by inch so as not to wake his bed-partner. What was wrong with him? His sleeping body must have sought the closeness out of sheer muscle memory—and yes, of course he was hard. _What the fuck._

When Gersha twisted in his arms, his eyes opening, Tilrey stopped breathing. He wrested himself free and slid to the edge of the bed as if he could pretend it hadn’t happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his back to Gersha now. “I never meant . . . I was asleep.”

After a moment, tentative fingertips brushed his shoulder. “It’s okay. It could have been me as easily as you. Just . . . habit.”

Tilrey nodded, wondering why the hand wasn’t withdrawing. In his imagination, he seized hold of it, twisted round, pulled Gersha to him, and claimed his lover’s lips with passionate hunger. In reality, he stayed absolutely still, trying to ignore the itch of excitement in his groin. _Green hells, I still want you. Always will._

Gersha patted his shoulder. “These things will happen, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Without contraries there is no progression" comes from William Blake's _The Marriage of Heaven & Hell_, which Edvard Linnett apparently read and decided to write his own version of. :) I'm pretty sure this piece of the story originated in my high school "Brit Lit" class, when reading this weird dialectical/heretical prose/verse thing from the 18th century totally blew my mind, so I kept it in for nostalgia reasons. :)


	6. The Well

It was a fine day, a brisk wind blew from the lake, and the city stunk. The scent of raw sewage combined with the rattling and rolling of the Duke’s coach to make Gersha think he might lose his breakfast.

They were traveling downhill on one of the main thoroughfares, toward the lake—and the Well. The past two days had been spent entirely in and around the Duke’s immaculate palace, and now Gersha could see why the ruler might be a bit reluctant to show them his city.

It wasn’t that Bettevy was hideous. No, the white and pinkish pre-Tangle buildings shone fetchingly in the sun, though some were in sad disrepair. Gersha was especially taken with several sharp spires that seemed to scratch at the very sky—the sacred buildings of another era, the Duke had explained to him. Now they were mostly used as asylums and workhouses for the poor.

It was the poor themselves who troubled Gersha. Old men and women begged on street corners, their rags filthy and their withered faces oozing with sores. Unsupervised children and youths were everywhere—scrawny and half starved, darting out in front of carriages to hawk dubious-looking wares and sometimes, he suspected, their own bodies. Disease and misery spread out in every direction from his high perch on the narrow coach seat. He was ashamed to meet a single eye.

“How are you liking the books I lent you, Councillor?” the Duke asked, beside Gersha. He was wearing a lush black suit today, velvet with a whisper of blinding-white silk at the neck, and he carried a heavy, jeweled cane that seemed more ornamental than functional.

Gersha glanced behind them, where Tilrey and Sgt. Ardaly were making themselves as comfortable as possible on a crate. He and the Duke shared the only real seat in this compact vehicle, and the Duke was controlling the horse himself with deft twitches of the reins and snicks of the whip. The Duchess, her daughters, and Silas rode in a larger carriage to the rear.

Perhaps the Duke had arranged this so they could talk semi-privately about the questionable books. But Gersha was finding it hard to focus on anything but the human mass beneath them.

“They’re very angry,” he said, trying to remember his reading. “The writers keep speaking of a world polarized into factions and a coming darkness. And ‘freedom,’ always freedom.” The word stuck in his throat, and he had to clear it.

It felt obscene to go on about ancient history when people were suffering right here in the sunlight in front of them. But he’d been warned over and over not to question the Duke’s methods of governance. _No questions, no confrontations. We need his cooperation_.

“At some times and places,” he went on, feeling the words take bitter form in his throat, “it appears that ‘freedom’ has meant the freedom to suffer and not much else.”

The Duke chucked gently to his horse. They were only a block from the lake now; it spread glittering before them, edged by parkland and trees. The water was pocked with sails, white and crimson and yellow, and an intense fishy smell was replacing the stink of the upper city.

The Duke worked his reins, and the horse veered right, working its way along the shore on a rough cobblestoned path. On the water’s edge, the masts of docked boats creaked with each soft slap of the waves. On the shore side, saffron and purple wildflowers highlighted the green of open pastures. Well-dressed people passed on the two-wheeled, self-powered contraptions that Gersha had learned to call bicycles. But there were still beggars—always, always the beggars.

“In the years before what you call the Unraveling,” the Duke said in his temperate, urbane way, “this promenade was a place of pleasure and recreation. There was very little suffering here.”

Gersha tried to imagine it: the blooming beauty of this landscape combined with the level of welfare and order in Oslov. He couldn’t. “It must have been a paradise.”

The Duke laughed shortly. “No. It was a place of anger, like most places in those days. You felt that anger in the books, but there’s much you don’t understand. All places and all people were connected by the Light Web then, Councillor—can you imagine? No. You don’t even believe.”

“I’m familiar with . . . information networks.” Gersha wasn’t sure how specific it was safe to be about technology. “They’re tools we use, driven by electric impulses. But this Web you speak of sounds more mystical. Could you explain?”

“Explain?” The Duke laughed again, deeper this time. “No, my friend. That’s beyond my abilities. You must see for yourself.”

His arm swept out to reveal a tall, hideous building perched right on the water’s edge—a weathered, blackened rectangle. It reminded Gersha of a decommissioned Oslov factory he’d once seen, dating from an era of dirtier power. As they came abreast of it, he spied a tangle of ladders and catwalks on the far side, half hidden by a riot of vines.

A liveried man dashed out of a nearby outbuilding, bowed, and grabbed hold of the horse’s bridle. “Your Grace.”

With the barest nod of recognition, the Duke gave the servant the reins and accepted his hand down from the carriage. “Fir Councillor?” he asked politely, extending his own gloved hand to Gersha.

But Gersha was still staring at the building. “Is _this_ the Well?”

Who would worship in a place like this? It was all he could think of as they joined the rest of the party and stepped toward the building’s maw. On the threshold, Gersha paused and shuddered, feeling a chill take hold of him, and the Duke patted his arm. “Come.”

They found themselves crammed into a narrow, clammy space with a few dozen Harbourers in similarly aristocratic dress. Though torches in wall sconces cast the only light, Gersha could see this was no place for the elite. It was a junk heap, a ruin.

Flickering flames picked out rat holes in the walls and piles of debris. The roof rose high above them, engendering echoes. The whole place stunk of coal mined deep in the earth, of narrow cavities where men died—yet there was an underlying smell of earth and growing things, too, as in a hothouse.

Gersha wandered over to examine the ancient, sweating bricks, then looked up and saw only strangers. He turned in a circle, choked by panic, until Tilrey appeared at his side—“How was your ride, Fir?”—and a dark-robed figure turned around and became the Duke, holding out a stack of similar garments.

“We’d appreciate it if you could wear these, Fira,” Dalziel said, smiling disarmingly as the two of them fit their arms into the loose sleeves. “We all come to the Well dressed the same, as pilgrims.”

Gersha had been imagining this trip to the Well as a harmless, probably dull exercise in cultural exchange. Now his head filled with every disturbing thing he’d ever heard about old religious practices. The Feudals in Oslov’s Southern Range had worshipped trees and caves, and they’d been rumored to practice human sacrifice in lean years. Surely Bettevy didn’t . . .?

He opened his mouth to ask precisely what was going to happen here—and shut it again as the loudest music he’d ever heard in his life drowned out his words.

Gersha knew “music” mainly as the cloying electronic warbling heard in vid-streams made for Laborers. This came from everywhere, an avalanche bearing down on them, each note like debris raining on his ears. And yet there was an order to it, a lugubrious melody.

He covered his ears and saw Tilrey was doing the same. When the room abruptly went dead silent, they both dropped their arms with guilty grimaces.

“The organ,” the Duke whispered to Gersha. “It can take getting used to.”

If he said any more, the words were lost in another deafening burst of noise. Gersha managed not to cover his ears this time, but he was grateful when Tilrey seized hold of his hand.

The organ proceeded like a giant, arthritic beast—a bellow followed by silence followed by another cavalcade of sound. After four or five rounds of this—Gersha’s ears rang—everyone craned their necks toward a torch-lit niche halfway up the wall.

A man in a plain black robe stood up there, arms raised in a V, alternately orating and chanting. Gersha understood very little: something about opening their minds, something about light, something about being worthy.

Just as he was starting to hope the worship was almost over, with no blood spilled, a terrible grating assaulted his ears. The friction of metal on metal burrowed into his brain, icing his blood and making him scuttle back nearly into Tilrey’s arms. Before them, a gigantic, rusted door was inching open.

The opening revealed more darkness, but the darkness . . . glowed. It wasn’t the tawny radiance of the torches, but a ghostly green like the aurora borealis.

Gersha’s heart began to thunder. What _was_ this? What if the “damned” were also the sacrifice?

The Duke took hold of Gersha’s arm and steered him toward the half-open door. “My guests and family always have the first right of entry. Will you do me the honor?”

“I don’t know if . . .” Gersha broke off, unable to control his trembling, wondering if the Duke was courteously pretending not to notice his terror or was actually enjoying it. “This is all very . . .”

“Shh. It’s okay,” Tilrey murmured in his ear, following close behind.

Tilrey had probably understood the chanting; if he thought they were safe, Gersha would trust him. But he clung tightly to his lover’s hand as they entered a space he couldn’t begin to map.

They must be inside the belly of the industrial monolith—where else? But all Gersha could see were rivulets of eerie blue-green light. Like veins and capillaries, they unfurled in every direction: a network of radiance that bifurcated, pooled, spooled, zigzagged, enlaced, encircled, connected—everywhere, everywhere.

They were standing on a sort of platform, the only part of the space not covered with the glow _._ When he looked down, he saw nothing but the web of light, and when he turned in a circle, same, and when he looked up at the roof, which seemed as distant as the stars, same. They were caught in it.

Lightheaded, Gersha closed his eyes, and through his lids he still saw the glare. He kept his death grip on Tilrey’s hand.

After what felt like an endless moment, fingers moved in his, and hair tickled his ear. Tilrey whispered, “It’s bioluminescence, I think. A moss or fungus.”

Bioluminescence—yes, that explained the hothouse smell. Ashamed that he hadn’t realized that first, Gersha forced himself to loosen his bruising grip, then to open his eyes.

He tried to look at the Well with a neutral, scientific eye—an Oslov eye. The strange patterns formed by the glowing fungus, methodical and organic at once, were half circuit board and half information network. He recalled something he’d heard a haughty Oslov voice say a long time ago, describing Harbourers: _If they can’t understand our tech, why, at least they can make something pretty and useless out of it_.

“This is your Light Web,” he said to the Duke, his voice croaking in the vastness. “Or a model of it. How you imagine it was. But . . . what happened to it?”

_What made it Unravel?_ Though he’d vowed never to be as naïve as the kid in every Primary classroom who asked about the Unraveling, the sight of the intricate glowing network filled Gersha with a weird regret. His irrational terror gave way to a sense of having lost something, though he couldn’t imagine what.

“Surely you know what happened to the Light Web, Councillor.” The Duke spoke very low, warm breath against Gersha’s ear. “Humanity wasn’t ready to connect yet. God’s Light allowed us to become one, with no secrets from each other, but we weren’t pure enough to accept God’s gift. And so the Light Web was riven by hatred. It turned on itself, sickened, and ripped itself into pieces. Then the world killers were launched, and the last lights went dark.”

“World killers?”

A faint huff of amusement. “You call them nuclear warheads, Councillor. Strange that you pretend not to know what I mean, when your people are the only ones left on earth who still hoard them like children with piles of sharp stones.”

***

“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Fir?” Tilrey asked, peering up at the high coach seat.

Gersha was still wearing the brown robe he’d been given inside the Well; he pulled it close around him, shivering. But he said in his usual proud way, “I’m fine. Go on, take a jaunt through the city. I know you want to stretch your legs.”

“We’ll take good care of the Councillor, Fir Bronn,” the Duke said, his eyes steady on Tilrey’s. “But if you’re going to walk back to the palace, you need an escort. Your accent may blend in, but your person doesn’t.”

Tilrey had noticed the Bettevans staring at him; his height and complexion stood out here. Was a solitary Oslov a target, then? He turned to Sgt. Ardaly, who stood scowling with crossed arms, waiting to board the coach. “Would it be too much trouble for you to accompany me, Sergeant? I’d rather not ride back up the hill jolting around on that crate.”

This was true, and it was also true Tilrey wanted to stretch his legs and get a closer view of Bettevy. More than that, though, he wanted an opportunity to talk to Ardaly alone. If they were going to spend a whole ten-day trekking through the wilds of the Park, with only Harbourer guardsmen for company, they needed to clear the air between them.

Ardaly looked disgusted, but service was deeply ingrained in him. “Fine,” he said, bobbing his head.

“We’ll see you at the top, then.” Tilrey gave Gersha a last reassuring glance, nodded respectfully to the Duke, and set off up the hill.

He didn’t have to check on Ardaly; he could feel the faint breeze of the big man keeping pace with him. “Verdant hells, it’s good to get away from all the ceremony and respectfulness for a few minutes. Don’t you think?”

The response came in a growl: “If you’d ever worn a uniform, maybe you wouldn’t have a _problem_ with respectfulness.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tilrey did turn now, but Ardaly was staring straight ahead.

“You don’t like me, I get that,” Tilrey went on. “Does it piss you off playing bodyguard to a Councillor’s whore? If not, then what the fuck is your problem? Because we’ll need to have each other’s backs over there.”

Ardaly mumbled unintelligibly. They were trudging toward a house perched by itself that made Tilrey think of a glacier and a fairy story at once: glowing white with six fluted columns in its façade. He was so busy gaping at it, wondering who could possibly live there, that he nearly collided with a shabby, liquor-breathed youth who was stumbling down the hill. Ardaly grabbed the youth’s shoulders and steered him efficiently to one side.

“Thanks,” Tilrey muttered. He couldn’t deny Ardaly seemed good at his job. “Were you saying something before?”

“I said, I don’t have a problem with people who get fucked professionally. Or ‘whores,’ if you want to use that word. I don’t like slurs, myself.”

This was very odd delicacy for a military man, in Tilrey’s experience. “So, if that’s not the problem, then what? Have I done something to you without realizing it?”

“You were a pain in my ass at the Embassy.” Ardaly shot a deadpan glare at him. “Can’t deny that.”

Tilrey met the glare, arching his brows. “Okay, maybe. But you’ve been giving me that look since we boarded the plane in Redda.”

Ardaly turned away, surveying the crowd of colorfully robed Harbourers who streamed up and down the dirt track in both directions. A girl darted in front of them brandishing a tray of apples, and he steered her aside the way he had the drunken youth—firm yet gentle. Not such a brute, then.

“Think you can charm your way past anyone,” Ardaly said, seizing Tilrey’s elbow to guide him between two groups of gaping, yelling urchins. “I know your type.”

Tilrey didn’t pull away. “I’m not trying to charm or seduce you, Sergeant Ardaly.” _Though I probably would if I thought it would help._ “I just think we need to be civil to each other. I’m not some payload you’re transporting over there.” He angled his head toward the lake. “We’re on the same team. So, what’s your issue?”

Ardaly kept his grip on Tilrey’s arm as they moved into the shadow of taller buildings. This part of the city almost looked like a _real_ city, the four-story pre-Tangle tenements draped with wash lines and tomato vines. The walkway and street had clearly been paved once, though now they were mostly dirt and weeds.

“Krisha,” Ardaly said in a tight voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Kristan Reingarth. Linnett’s driver. The Outer. _Krisha._ ” The sergeant’s jaw was tight, his freckles standing out as they returned to sunlight. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember him. Don’t pretend you don’t know why I really volunteered for this mission.”

“Krisha,” Tilrey said, piecing his memories together. “That was Malsha Linnett’s driver. But he wasn’t an Outer, he was an ex-serviceman from Karkei.”

Ardaly just kept looking daggers at him. “Krisha told me you made fun of his accent. You said it sounded ‘gamey.’ He had citizenship papers, thanks to Linnett, but you _knew_.”

“Knew what?” Tilrey remembered Krisha, all right. There’d been no love lost between him and Linnett’s driver from the moment he came to live in that house. Krisha had called Tilrey “whiny” and “uppity,” seeming positively scandalized by his refusal to be grateful for his position, while Linnett egged on the conflict between them.

“You knew Krisha was really an Outer! From the Wastes!” Ardaly hissed.

Tilrey shook his head, baffled. “Was he?” Outers never won citizenship without sponsorship from a high Upstart, and even then they tended to be pariahs. Linnett must have kept his driver’s origins very quiet.

“Why else would you make fun of his accent?” Ardaly’s blue eyes flared at him.

“Linnett told me Krisha came from Karkei, and that’s what I believed. We didn’t get along that well.” Tilrey shivered as he remembered how Malsha had “given” him to the driver a few times as punishment. “But if I made fun of Krisha, so what? Why . . .”

He’d never heard of a soldier of the Republic being protective of an Outer. But as he gazed at the aggrieved slash of Ardaly’s mouth, the truth dawned on him. “You and Krisha were friends. No, more than friends.”

“Fuck off.” Ardaly released Tilrey so suddenly he stumbled.

But now he was on the right track. “When Malsha Linnett went into exile, Krisha escaped with him. And now—well, it sounds like you’re hoping Krisha’s still faithfully serving Linnett. You volunteered for this mission so you could find him.”

Ardaly’s frown lines deepened. “He never told you about me?”

“Krisha? About you?” He nearly laughed, but it would have been rude. “We didn’t discuss personal things. I guess you could say we had different attitudes when it came to serving Upstarts. So, were you two madly in love?”

“Fuck off,” the sergeant muttered again. And then, “If you tell Albertine Linnett about Krisha and me, I’ll find a way to kill you. Here or at home—doesn’t matter. I’ve got the skills. Don’t think you’re safe.”

“Oh, I don’t.” So that explained the chip on Ardaly’s shoulder. He’d feared Tilrey already knew enough to get him removed from his precious mission.

It was funny and sad at once, and it touched a chord in Tilrey that throbbed a bit too painfully. _I know about keeping secrets._ “You haven’t seen Krisha in ten years, then,” he said. “Are you sure you still care about him?”

A blush flooded Ardaly’s hawkish face. “Don’t know where you’d get that idea.”

“Oh, so you want to reunite with him for no particular reason.” Tilrey summoned his memories of Krisha—an undeniably handsome man, in a rough way. “Look, Sergeant—Gavril—I won’t say a word to Albertine about your own private mission. Just start treating me like a human being. I’ll even do what I can to help you bring Krisha back with you, if he wants to come.”

The sergeant walked with his hands fisted by his sides now, making no effort to dodge passersby. A youth collided with him and yelled, “Damned castaway,” but Ardaly didn’t react.

“He’ll come,” he said through gritted teeth. “No way he’d rather be with that traitor than with me.”

Tilrey recognized that conviction. Maybe he’d dared to believe once, too, that love was stronger than anything else.

“I hope so,” he said.

***

For the first time in Harbour, Gersha felt free. He was rambling the palace grounds unaccompanied, still draped in the formless brown robe he’d been given at the Well, and no one was stopping to stare at him.

When he passed three gardeners who were clipping weeds around a stone basin, they looked up briefly, then returned to their tasks. Two kitchen maids eating lunch on a brick wall completely ignored him.

He explored a grove of tall pines, then emerged into a garden full of gnarled, thorny flowers with crimson petals. An old woman with clippers called out to him in Harbourer, something about helping her.

Reading her body language, Gersha held a stubborn bush back so she could prune it. Only after she thanked him and he said, “You’re welcome” did she give a start and back away, looking as dismayed as if he’d tricked her on purpose.

“You shouldn’t be doing this work, sir—Fir, I mean! You’re his Grace’s guest!”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t see the harm.”

“You fit in better than you realize,” said a familiar, amused voice behind him.

Gersha turned and found the Duke sitting on a low stone wall, watching them. The old woman bowed and skittered off to another corner of the garden, while Gersha removed the brown robe, rather reluctantly, and said, “I didn’t know this would be camouflage.”

The Duke took the robe and folded it. “Your secretary speaks like us, but he doesn’t look like us. You, on the other hand, blend in as long as you don’t speak. Does that upset you, Councillor?”

“Of course not.” Gersha followed the Duke back through the old pine grove, beginning to feel trapped by his duties again. _Make him like you. Trust you._

“And yet you’re not quite comfortable with me.” Dalziel paused, hands clasped behind his back. “Is it what I said to you at the Well, about the world killers? Did that upset you, Councillor?”

Gersha knew he should smooth over the moment like the diplomat he was. But the breeze sifting through the pine needles reminded him of walking with Tilrey in the taiga. And he said, “Wasn’t that your intent, your Grace? To shake me up a bit?”

The Duke smiled in a sly, appreciative way that reminded Gersha of Besha. “Now at last you’re being honest with me. Good. Yes, I meant to unsettle you. To reproach you. Is that really a surprise?”

Gersha leaned back against a solid trunk. “I guess . . . no. It isn’t.”

Until now, he’d never given much thought to how Harbourers might feel about the Republic’s arsenal. The missiles were safe in Oslov hands when they would have been dangerous in Harbourer ones—what else mattered? Oslov proved itself worthy of world-killing power by not using it. That was why Linnett’s act of treason, stealing a warhead to help Colonel Thibault crush one of her enemies, was so horrifying.

But now, putting himself in the Duke’s place, Gersha imagined how helpless all the globe’s other rulers must feel. A few taps on a keyboard in Oslov could reduce their countries to ash.

“It’s for that very reason,” he said tentatively, “that having a garrison of our troops here might . . . reassure you about the expansionist force to your west.”

The Duke sighed deeply. “Please spare me the sales pitch, Fir Councillor—Gersha. I do know why you’re here. And you’re less arrogant than your damned Ambassador, which I certainly appreciate. But I’m not going to discuss the security of my realm with someone who doesn’t know the first thing about it.”

The tone was still impeccably polite, but Gersha felt like he’d been slapped. “I did my research,” he murmured.

Dalziel’s brown eyes softened a little. “I phrased that wrong. What I meant to say is, I find you too interesting to want to discuss something as dull as policy with you.” He began to walk again, ushering Gersha before him. “Your relationship with Fir Bronn, for instance. You seem to treat him almost like an equal, yet there’s a distance between you. Fir’n Linnett suggested in her tactful way that you were partners in life, but now I wonder if you are.”

Gersha drew in his breath; must _everyone_ ask him the same question? “Nothing escapes your observation,” he said coldly _._

Dalziel didn’t seem fazed. “Oh, I know. I’m being quite outrageous. I simply wondered, I suppose, in my boorish way, whether having a lover of a different Level might have taught you to think more . . . broadly than most of your countrymen do.”

“Broadly?” Gersha gave the Duke a sharp look. “I’m not a Dissenter, your Grace. I’m a devoted Whybergian.” Why did his voice sound strained, even to himself?

“Of course, of course.” The Duke plucked a striking circular flower from the grass—orange petals, brown stamen—and passed it to Gersha. “I never intended to question your loyalty,” he said soothingly. “You mustn’t take everything I say so seriously, Fir; sometimes I talk nonsense to amuse myself. I only meant that you seem to have a certain openness to new experiences that I, personally, consider an excellent quality.”

Gersha remembered how he’d cringed and shuddered in the Embassy courtyard. He remembered the awful disappointment on Tilrey’s face when he realized he was being thrown out of Gersha’s home— _their_ home.

“Not everyone would say that about me,” he said sadly, as he brought the flower to his nose and smelled its faint wild perfume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Well was semi-inspired by Jeff VanderMeer's _Annihilation_. Also, bioluminescence is just cool (and hard to spell!).
> 
> Karkei is the other Laborer city, sister city to Thurskein. Basically, if you live within Oslov territory but not in Redda, Thurskein, or Karkei, Oslovs consider you an "Outer," and that's not a good thing to be. Oslov soldiers have done some pretty awful things to Outer settlements when they were deemed a threat to the Republic, usually because they were stealing Oslov goods or tech.
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	7. The Phantom Damned

Two days before the mission, Tilrey finally found the source of the alarming sounds he’d been hearing on his morning walks. Behind the kitchen garden, in a scrubby field hedged in by the foot of a small cliff, half a dozen men were shooting primitive rifles at tin cans set up on a fence. Most of them wore the uniforms of the Duke’s guardsmen, but Silas Chen-Trevanian was there, too, and he appeared to be a crack shot.

Tilrey paused just behind the young man, admiring how he lined up the muzzle with his target. “I didn’t think you were a soldier,” he said in English.

Silas wheeled round, glowering. “I’m not, but I can defend myself like any freeman. Or maybe you think I’m not freeborn? Or a man?”

“Of course not!” Social distinctions here were so granular, and the whole issue of masculinity seemed particularly fraught. “I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that, where I come from, only soldiers can use firearms. And Constables, sometimes, when they’re dealing with a dangerous suspect.”

Scorn pulled Silas’s mouth down. “Well, in Bettevy, we don’t live penned up in government housing like animals being fattened for slaughter. We travel free through the countryside, and we _need_ to defend ourselves.”

“You picking a fight with the castaway, Silas?” one of the guardsmen asked, grinning.

“Sure you could take him?” another one teased. “He’s half-again bigger’n you are.”

Silas glared at Tilrey as if he were actually considering the possibility. Tilrey imagined he _could_ overpower the Harbourer, unless Silas was also an expert brawler, but he felt no animosity toward the young man. He took a step back and spread his hands, emphasizing his harmlessness. The guardsmen looked disappointed, as if they’d hoped for a display of aggression.

“Hey!”

He’d walked backward into Gavril Ardaly, who was joining the gathering. The sergeant wore a rifle of his own slung across his chest—one mass-produced in Oslov, sleeker and better equipped than the Harbourers’ weapons. “What are you doing here?” he asked Tilrey, seeming more genuinely mystified than annoyed for once. “Are you always underfoot?”

Tilrey felt a sly smile curve his lips. “Silas here says men traveling cross-country need to defend themselves. How about you show me how to use that firearm?”

“You’re a civilian!” Ardaly held the rifle protectively to his chest, his eyes sweeping the crowd of shooters. “It’s not proper knowledge for you.”

Tilrey had only wanted to needle Ardaly, but now he found himself insisting. “What if you get incapacitated on our little trip? What if I need to fend for myself?”

“Only fools go defenseless into the wild, Fir,” one of the guardsmen said with a nasty smile.

Silas’s eyes were on Tilrey, still hostile. “Maybe the sergeant doesn’t trust you. The Councillor doesn’t, does he? I can tell from the way he looks at you sometimes—like you might pick his pocket.”

_That_ hurt, but Tilrey was a master of not showing when things hurt, and anyway, it was beneath his Oslov dignity to care what Silas thought about anything. “The Fir Councillor’s feelings are none of your concern as far as I can see,” he said levelly.

Silas winked at him, undeterred. “Maybe _you_ should have had a bit more concern for him. A lord needs to know he can trust his servant.”

_I could knock you down before you even got in a good swing at me._ But Tilrey had never been in a scrap, only listened to Bror’s fight stories, and anyway, he had a diplomatic mission. Swallowing his irritation, he said, “I’m not a servant” and turned to head back across the field.

He was stopped by a shoulder bump that was bluff yet oddly sociable.

“I could give you a few pointers, I guess,” Ardaly said. He held out the gleaming firearm toward Tilrey, drawing covetous stares from the guardsmen and even, Tilrey suspected, from Silas.

“I thought you said—”

Still the sergeant didn’t look him in the eye. “You might as well know enough not to shoot yourself in the foot.”

***

Gersha looked up from his book to see Tilrey stepping through the gate into the kitchen garden. He almost called out a greeting, then realized Tilrey wasn’t alone. That tall, sharp-cheekboned sergeant was with him, the two deep in conversation as they rambled among the beds of tomatoes, spinach, and squash.

Gersha shrank into himself on the bench, lifting the book to cover his face, though he still watched them from the corner of his eye. They must have logistical details to discuss before their mission. He couldn’t see any other reason why Tilrey would spend time with someone who, while admittedly handsome, seemed like a bit of a sour-faced lunkhead.

Or maybe not so sour-faced today—was Ardaly actually chuckling at something Tilrey had said? Well, of course, they were both Laborers; they had things in common. Wasn’t that why Tilrey had joined the Dissidents in the first place—some notion of Laborer solidarity that Gersha would never grasp?

Ranek Egil apparently had, though. And now he found himself imagining Tilrey and Ranek standing just like that, with their heads close together, perhaps laughing at him, and _stop it_.

“Isn’t he just beautiful?” a girl’s voice said.

Jogged out of his bitter thoughts, Gersha saw Savina, the Duke’s younger daughter, balancing on the rim of a cabbage bed. She was barefoot, a white dress sweeping her ankles.

“Your secretary,” she went on, keeping her Harbourer slow for his comprehension. Her eyes followed Tilrey and Ardaly, who’d wandered away, heading for the porch. “If I came upon someone like him in the woods, without warning, I might think I was having a visitation from a ghost or a god.”

_Does_ everyone _have to fall in love with him?_ Gersha couldn’t keep a certain tartness out of his voice as he said, “He’s attractive, yes, but I assure you, very human. I don’t think he has many opportunities to traipse randomly in the woods here. Nor do you, I imagine.”

He must have looked severe; Savina laughed delightedly. “I was thinking of the phantoms on the other side of the lake, in the Park. Sometimes travelers encounter them deep in the woods, far from any town—that’s the rumor, anyway.”

“Phantoms?” Maybe he was confusing two different words. “You’re talking about ghosts?”

“People say they’re tall and blond and beautiful, and they speak a foreign language that sounds like the ice breaking up in the spring. Like your people.” She giggled again, tracing a circle in the grass with her big toe. “ _The phantom damned_ , we call them.”

Gersha shut his book with a clap. “You’re saying there are _Oslovs_ on the other side of the lake? In the Park? That’s absurd. We don’t trade with Resurgence.” All the Oslovs with legitimate reasons to be in Harbour were in Bettevy. The stories must be mistaken, or else they referred to a tribe of Harbourers who happened to resemble Oslovs in superficial ways.

“It’s only a tale, Fir.” Savina turned a pirouette and began floating away from him as lightly as she’d come. “Only stories the common people tell. Most stories aren’t true.”

“Why are you repeating it if it’s not true?” But Gersha’s urgency appeared to alarm Savina, and the more questions he asked, the farther away she flitted, until he gave up.

The story stayed with Gersha, though, cratering out an uneasy space in his chest. At dinner that night, and then later in the library, he considered asking the Duke about the “phantom damned.” But they were discussing the Harbourer lore surrounding the Unraveling, and Gersha was too absorbed to change the subject.

“Did you know,” he asked Tilrey an hour later, slipping off his clothes by candlelight, “that about five hours to the south of here there’s a ruined city that was once the busiest on the entire continent? And that radiation rendered it uninhabitable?”

Tilrey sat in bed with a book propped on his knees. “I didn’t know that before I came here, no. But I’ve heard the Bettevans mention the ruins.”

Gersha recognized the book he was reading— _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour. _So they were both taking in their share of subversive thoughts tonight.

“Not that it matters, of course,” he said, unsettled by the note of interest in Tilrey’s voice. “What’s done is done.”

Could Dissidents twist historical knowledge to their advantage? Perhaps. No wonder, really, given that Oslovs were taught such a censored and truncated version of what all Harbourers seemed to know.

_Why?_ asked a small voice in Gersha’s brain. _Why aren’t we supposed to care why the world Unraveled?_ It wasn’t actually forbidden knowledge, he told himself sternly, just _unnecessary_. According to Whyberg, Oslov always looks forward.

“I heard the strangest tall tale from Savina today,” he went on, eager to distract himself from these thoughts. “Harbourers imagine there’s a colony of rogue Oslovs lurking in the woods across the lake—the phantom damned, they call them.”

He expected Tilrey to laugh incredulously, or at least to glance up and note the absurdity of the story the way he had. But Tilrey only turned another page, his eyes steady on the book, and said, “Strange indeed.”

“You’ve already heard it, too, then? This folktale?”

“I may have heard something vaguely like that. I don’t remember.”

He sounded so distant and disengaged it was positively maddening. Gersha asked, “What are you learning from that book, anyway? How to bring down the Republic and put another Harbour in its place?”

Tilrey raised his eyes. At last there was life in him, though he seemed more amused than offended. “No. Edvard Linnett never had anything that prosaic in mind. He was obsessed with the way Oslovs think about things, the oppositions we use to order our experience. He believed that by prioritizing safety above all else, we cut ourselves off from energy, from vitality.”

Gersha pulled back the covers and slid into bed. The chirping and keening of insects were still thick in the air, though the Duke had assured him they’d soon dwindle into silence as autumn took hold.

“What good is energy without safety?” he asked huffily. “I mean, isn’t basic wellbeing the prerequisite for everything else? You’ve seen the beggars on the streets here—they don’t seem ‘vital’ to me.”

“No, they don’t, Fir.” Tilrey closed the book and blew out the candle. “It’s just another perspective, that’s all.”

“Maybe the ‘phantom damned’ are just another perspective. One can’t go believing everything one hears.”

“No.” Tilrey sounded distant again. “I suppose one can’t.”

In the dark, the bed seemed to shrink. Gersha rolled over and tried to pretend Tilrey wasn’t there, but he could _feel_ him.

“Is Sergeant Ardaly vital?” he asked in a nasty tone, then immediately wanted to drown himself in the lake.

Tilrey shifted, pulling a bit more of the coverlet to his side. “Vital? I suppose. Are you actually jealous of him?”

Gersha felt hairs prickle on his neck and the backs of his arms and thighs. If he let himself sleep now, he might end up in Tilrey’s arms. He couldn’t stop thinking about rolling over and reaching for him, as if a phantom version of himself were already doing it.

“Why on earth would I be?” he snapped. “Go to sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're pretty much done with the sightseeing—shit's gonna start getting real in the next chapter. Thanks so much for reading!


	8. Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added a Dub-Con tag because this chapter borders on that, though it's over quickly.
> 
> So, in the last chapter, Gersha behaved Very Badly; now it's Tilrey's turn. These two may need some time apart to appreciate each other better, in the nice fresh mountain air. :) Things are getting intense in the coming chapters, and I'm having fun writing them! Thanks for reading. <3

The night before he left on the mission, Tilrey got ridiculously drunk.

He blamed the Duke for breaking out several casks of hard cider. It wasn’t as strong as rotgut liquor, but it was light and bubbly and too easy to drink too fast. By the time he realized he’d overindulged, they were out in the garden watching fireworks arc over the lake and dribble down in green and pink and silver, and Tilrey had to catch hold of the rough brick wall to hold himself upright.

He heard himself mumble, “Don’ wanna go.”

“What’s that?” asked Gersha, sounding obnoxiously sober.

“Never mind.”

_I don’t want to go._ It would be so much easier to stay here eating the Duke’s delicious food, drinking his cider, and reading his books. But that would be the safe thing to do, and if Tilrey stayed safe, he’d never get to explore his vital energies. What had Silas said? He’d described Oslovs as livestock being fattened for slaughter, but Tilrey was _not_ livestock, he was—

Pushing off the wall again, staggering, he found himself held upright by steady arms. “How’re you doing?” Gersha whispered in his ear.

“Fine. ’m fine.” Green hells, he was acting the fool tonight. But the air was mellow and smelled of flowers, and the lawn seemed to vibrate to the keening of the grasshoppers, and the warm body against his felt good. He pressed closer to Gersha, twining an arm around his waist, and bent to kiss him.

Gersha didn’t pull away. His mouth fell open under Tilrey’s, hot and wet, but he didn’t kiss back.

Still, rubbing his thigh against Gersha’s groin, Tilrey found the hardness he’d been hoping for. “C’mon,” he murmured, Gersha’s curls humid against his cheek. “Let’s go to bed before we embarrass ourselves.”

Gersha squirmed—first fetchingly, then really resisting, so that Tilrey released him. “I need to say good night to the Duke,” he said, breathless.

“No, you don’t.” Tilrey searched the terrace for the Duke and found only servants cleaning up stray glasses on the balustrade. The fireworks were over, leaving a hazy spray of stars overhead. The mountains loomed across the lake, carving black scallops in the paler sky, and tomorrow he’d be among them.

“C’mon, Fir.” As if he were the sober one, Tilrey latched an arm around Gersha and tugged him along: into the palace, through the parlor, up the stairs.

Gersha didn’t resist on the way to their room, only pulled out his key and fumbled it into the door—maybe he wasn’t so sober, after all. Once inside, though, he worried himself out of Tilrey’s embrace and flopped on the bed with his head in his hands.

“I know what your problem is, love.” Tilrey half-sat, half-fell on the bed beside Gersha, close enough to lean on him. A small, distant part of him was aghast at how he was behaving, but the rest of him could only think about how tomorrow he’d be headed for a wild, dangerous place where firearms were necessary. _I may not come back. I need this now._

“I see the problem,” he repeated, nuzzling Gersha’s neck. “You’re scared I’ll get the wrong idea. That you approve of me. That things can ever go back to how they were.” He nipped the silk of Gersha’s throat and whispered, “But I know you can’t love me. All I want to do tonight is serve you—the way I used to. The way I’m supposed to. I want to get on my knees and suck your cock till you see fireworks again, Fir. Will you let me do that?”

As he spoke, he edged his hand into Gersha’s lap and pressed on the hard bulge that hadn’t subsided. “Will you let me?”

Gersha stiffened, but his hips had begun rocking into Tilrey’s hand. “This isn’t fair,” he said hoarsely.

“No strings, Gersha—Fir.” Tilrey released Gersha reluctantly, slid off the bed, and sank to his knees on the plush, handwoven carpet. “Let me make you see stars, and I won’t ask for anything else. I just want something to remember you by while I’m away.”

“But you’ll be back in . . . five to ten days, Albertine said.” Gersha seemed to be having trouble forming full sentences. “And we agreed we wouldn’t do this.”

“Who agreed, love? You made a unilateral decision. Anyway, it’s just sex.” He teased Gersha’s trousers open. “Think of all the people I’ve served this way; _they_ never cared what was inside my head.”

“But I— _nnnurgh_!”

Fed up with arguing, Tilrey had whipped Gersha’s cock out of his trousers and begun circling the head with his tongue. Satisfied with the groan that burst from Gersha and the uncontrolled pitch of his hips, he traced a line from base to tip, as he always did, then went for full immersion.

He’d missed this delicate flesh, this heady musk, the hectic pulse of the vein, and the tang of fluid oozing from the tip. Yet none of it was right somehow. It felt frantic, rushed, as if he were racing to prove something to Gersha or himself.

He ignored that because the important thing was to please Gersha, to make Gersha associate him with bliss again. Malsha had taught him to suck cock, had even brought him to a renowned whore in the Sanctioned Brothel for a tutorial, and everyone agreed his mouth could practically wake the dead. No one had ever resisted it—certainly not Gersha, even that first night when he was so shy. Tilrey might not be able to shoot straight or impress Silas Chen-Trevanian or outwit Malsha or stop the True Hearthers from ordering him around, but he could do this, and Gersha was going to like it, and remember it, and—

Hands tangled in his hair, struggling with him, pushing his head away. Fingertips pressed tight on his temples, and Gersha said, “Not like this. No.”

Then they were separate again, the momentum of Gersha’s shove rocking Tilrey back on his knees, blood flooding his cheeks. “So I’m a dirty whore now, am I?” he asked, slurring the words.

“You’re drunk is what you are.” Gersha had slipped off the bed and was kneeling on the carpet beside him. His hands reached up to cup Tilrey’s face, and they felt so smooth and cool and neutral, like marble hands, that Tilrey closed his eyes and actually moaned from the pain of that touch.

“I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know who you are, what you are.” Gersha was swaying slightly now, his thumbnails digging into Tilrey’s chin, and _that_ felt good.

“Hurt me. Is that what you want to do?”

It was the absolute wrong thing to say. The lovely, tormenting hands released him. Gersha stood up and looked down at Tilrey, his eyes liquid with tears and his lips twisted. “You’re drunk,” he repeated. “You’re going to regret all this in the morning. Maybe hate me, too.”

“I won’t . . . I won’t.” Tilrey hugged himself. Above him, Gersha began undressing and getting ready for bed.

“I fucked this random Laborer, back in Redda. No, not totally random, he was nice, he . . .” _He wasn’t you._ Tilrey curled up on the carpet and let his head spin, because who cared about dignity now? “I didn’t think it mattered that much,” he whispered. “I used to think you cared more than I did, but now I think you don’t care at all.”

“You’re drunk,” Gersha said yet again, but the words were tight with pain, as if he were actually saying, _Please don’t._

And Tilrey stopped talking, because he knew what he’d said—that Gersha didn’t care—wasn’t true.

Some time later, Gersha tried to get him to sit up and take off his clothes. Tilrey offered passive resistance until Gersha gave up and blew out the candle, and he heard bedsprings squeak above him.

Gersha spoke close by, as if he were leaning down to Tilrey: “Come to bed, love. You need your rest for the trip tomorrow.”

“Don’ call me that. ’M fine here.” He wouldn’t sleep beside Gersha again, not like that, keeping his distance. Never again.

More time passed. Tilrey might have slept, or just passed out. The keening insects outside were softer.

“Had to.” Moonlight flooded through the curtains, and he wasn’t sure why he was suddenly sitting bolt upright saying these words, trying to explain himself. “Egil tricked me at first, but then, Gersha, I had to. They were all in it already—my friends, my—my friends. I saw how things were in Thurskein, saw it from a new perspective, and Gersha, I knew they were right. There’s too much corruption. Reform alone won’t reverse it. We need, we need a _change_. We need leverage.”

He stopped, not because he was saying too much (though he was) but because he was _pleading_. He was begging Gersha to understand, to forgive and accept him. And he already knew there was no point.

“Rishka.” Gersha’s voice was exhausted. “Please just come up here.”

***

Gersha spent most of the night in a shallow, restless sleep that felt more like a trance. One moment it was dark, and the next moment he snapped awake to find sunlight spilling across the bedspread and turning Tilrey’s hair to molten gold. Tilrey’s head rested on his bare stomach, just above the navel.

He had a woozy memory of stroking Tilrey’s hair and saying soothing things, while Tilrey’s head nudged the hem of his shirt upward. It had still been dark then, perhaps just before dawn. He’d gotten hard again, and he’d stayed very still and hoped Tilrey wouldn’t notice, because neither of them needed that right now.

Now Tilrey seemed to be sleeping at last. Gersha didn’t dare touch him for fear of waking him, though the departure time was approaching. He closed his eyes and willed himself to breathe quietly and evenly, doing his best to shut out the clucking of hens and the warbling of songbirds outside.

_He needs to rest for the journey. That’s what matters._ But something was wrong, something beyond all the other obvious things that were wrong, and Gersha drifted off still trying to puzzle it out.

When he woke again, the sunlight was brazen overhead. Tilrey was gone.

Gersha didn’t bother checking his handheld; the light said it was afternoon. He grabbed one of the dressing gowns the Duke had thoughtfully left out for his guests, soft and swirled with red and purple. Pulling it on, he dashed out of the room and down the passage. Barefoot on the stairs, he nearly collided with a servant who asked, “Were you wanting breakfast, honored Fir? Or lunch?”

“My—my secretary. Has he come down yet?”

Gersha already knew what the man would say, though his heart still sank as the response came: “He’s off with the sergeant, Fir. They took the carriage north toward Senjy.”

_Gone. Gone._ The wood of the stairs was warm beneath his soles, and sun flooded through the stained-glass window, yet he was shivering. “When did they leave?”

“Oh, hours ago, I think, Fir.” The servant was beginning to look worried. “Around ten. He said you wouldn’t be down for breakfast, you’d already said your goodbyes.”

_Have we?_ Gersha tried to tell himself everything was proceeding as planned. They’d had a bad night, yes, gotten way too honest, but alcohol will do that. Tilrey had sobered up, and in several days he’d be back and they could resume their strange stalemate again.

_Now I think you don’t care at all._ How could Tilrey say such a thing? Hadn’t he seen how much Gersha cared every time they got close? Every night in that damned bed?

“Ah well, I suppose it’s my fault for sleeping late,” he said, trying to sound gaily dismissive, and turned and padded back upstairs.

There he went through his morning routine, but he was trembling so much that he gave himself a nasty shaving nick and nearly took a fall getting on his trousers. And then, instead of going downstairs, he found himself sitting on the bed and cradling the pillow that Tilrey usually used, hugging it to his chest.

Tilrey had crouched on the floor last night, shuddering the way Gersha was now. Mumbling, making no sense, even occasionally sobbing. Begging for some kind of absolution that Gersha had no power to grant. How could he just _leave_?

A slither of bronze on Gersha’s own pillow caught the sun. He reached over and hooked his finger through a silver chain attached to an antique coin. With a sickening lurch in his stomach, he recognized Tilrey’s lucky Tangle artifact. _Their_ lucky Tangle artifact, the one from the day in the Southern Range when Gersha had gotten on his knees and, for the first time ever, made Tilrey lose control instead of the other way round.

Tilrey always wore this. If he hadn’t taken it off when Gersha threw him out of the house, why would he take it off now?

Clasping the pendant sweaty-tight in his left hand, Gersha seized his handheld in his right. Thanks to the towers that earlier generations of envoys had set up in Bettevy, it was easy to access the Embassy’s network. And from there, it didn’t take him long to find the backdoor he’d established into the system that tracked the anklets worn by every Oslov.

Gersha worked methodically, numbly, pausing only to push damp curls out of his eyes. There was a list of citizen ID numbers; he knew Tilrey’s by heart. All he had to do now was click to access the live tracking feed.

He hesitated, but only for an instant.

When he brought up the map and saw where the glowing blue dot was hovering, his stomach lurched again. _Can’t be. What is he thinking?_

Tilrey wasn’t headed inland and north toward Senjy, as Gersha had been told he’d be. He was smack dab in the middle of the lake, making steadily for the shore of Resurgence.

Suddenly the whole scene last night made sense. Tilrey wasn’t on Albertine’s mission. He’d left the pendant to tell Gersha he was heading into the wilds of Harbour, and he wasn’t coming back.

He was going to join the phantom damned.


	9. The Far Shore

Sunlight sparkled on the waves in every direction, making Tilrey squint. When he’d woken this morning with his head pillowed on Gersha’s chest, his skull had felt ready to split in two, but the fresh lake air had blown the pain away.

On a bench near the schooner’s bow, he watched the prow slice the modest waves. Seagulls shrieked as a breeze from the east carried them briskly across the long, narrow waterway. Clouds massed over Bettevy, merging into its green pastures and purple mountains, while with each meter they traveled, the taller mountains on the Resurgence side seemed to grow new crags and shadows.

“It looks deserted over there,” Tilrey shouted to Gavril Ardaly, who was watching the sailors trim the foresail. “Is there really a town?”

The sergeant nodded and settled beside him. “Essex. It’s not much more than a fishing village, but we can get ground transport there.”

“Remind me to find a mud puddle so we can dirty up our hair.” The objective was to look as Harbourer as possible. To camouflage their foreignness, they already wore rustic clothes of a sort commonly seen in the Park: deerhide jackets, trousers, and boots. Tilrey had an uncomfortable sense of wearing a corpse, but he couldn’t deny the leather was pleasantly soft against his skin.

_Soft._ He had a fragmentary memory of Gersha’s throat and pushed it away.

“You look ridiculous,” Ardaly said, grinning at him.

Tilrey grinned back, though he actually thought the leather molded itself to Ardaly’s tall, sturdy frame quite well. “Not just me, Sergeant.”

Turning toward Essex again, he reached thoughtlessly for the pendant he normally wore around his neck.

_Shit._ It wasn’t there, and with a distinct pinch of embarrassment, Tilrey remembered taking it off and leaving it on Gersha’s pillow.

It was one of those absurd gestures that made more sense when you were drunk. Had he hoped to remind Gersha of that day in the Southern Range when the tension between them finally thawed into something else? To promise Gersha he’d be back? Had he wanted Gersha to wear it around his own neck, pining for his return?

Ridiculous indeed. The excitement of setting off had helped him push last night into a dark, stuffy closet in his mind, but now details were rushing back. He’d gotten wasted and lost control and ranted Dissident ideas at Gersha like a pathetic, hysterical, love-struck boy, not a diplomat or a politician. He’d even whipped out his sexual skills and been rejected. Green hills and valleys, Gersha must despise him more than ever.

_Green hills and valleys._ His whole life he’d been swearing by landscape features he’d never actually seen. Now he was staring directly at them. He was going toward the green hills and valleys, deeper into that verdant—verdant what? Definitely not hell.

Tilrey rose, feeling the breeze whip his temples, and pushed last night back into that mental closet. _I was drunk. I was nervous about the mission. It was all because we had to share that stupid fucking bed._ “I’m ready for this,” he said to no one in particular.

Beside him, Ardaly barked a laugh. “I hope you are.”

***

Gersha kept his handheld close all afternoon. He paced and sweated, waiting for the inevitable call from Albertine to tell him Tilrey had gone rogue and would have to be brought back in cuffs. Twice he clutched at the device, thinking it was vibrating, but both times he was only hearing a fuzzy bee in the underbrush.

He’d been replaying all his recent interactions with Tilrey, and the one he kept coming back to was their brief conversation about the “phantom damned.” _I may have heard something vaguely like that_ , Tilrey had said, sounding far too blasé for someone who was usually intrigued by legends. Almost as if he were trying to telegraph a lack of interest in something that was actually extremely interesting to him. What if . . .

Gersha had heard shadowy stories of Administrators who suspected that workers were vanishing from the cities they oversaw. _They’re defecting, those damned shirkers!_ one had supposedly even ranted. Councillors tended to dismiss such complaints as paranoid, because where would “defectors” go? In Oslov, leaving the cities on foot was self-exile, and self-exile was suicide. A few Outers survived in the Wastes, true, but never many at a time.

What if the defectors had air transportation, though? Gersha had seen the rich, spacious landscapes of Harbour, where hiding a Dissident colony was more than feasible. What better place than the wilderness of the Park?

If Tilrey really had run off to join a band of shirkers, hadn’t he realized he’d be tracked? Were he and Ardaly in it together? Did they have a plan for outwitting their pursuers, or had they banked on Albertine not caring enough to come after them?

These possibilities drove Gersha back and forth for hours, pacing the pine grove and the rose garden, waiting for a frantic summons from the Embassy. Nothing came.

As the afternoon wore on, he had to resist an urge to message Albertine and ask leading questions. Could she have already sent troops after Tilrey without telling him? Could Tilrey be in custody already? Or was Gersha’s silence giving him the chance he needed to get away?

Gersha’s whole body seemed to hollow itself into a single gnawing ache, a desperate emptiness. He stretched out facedown on a bench and moaned softly, remembering Tilrey’s face on his stomach and his hand in Tilrey’s hair. That was less than twenty-four hours ago, and how had he been so aloof? Why hadn’t he clutched Tilrey in his arms and begged him to stay?

He remembered how it felt to rant at himself like this. He’d done it the first few nights after Tilrey’s confession, the sterile white walls of the apartment magnifying his misery and rage.

In Harbour, though, despair felt different, diffused. The shifting leaves and the faint drone of cicadas slowed the rhythms of his grief, sank into his bones. Above him, birds were building nests. Out on the lake, waves rose and fell. Nature continued—not with the monolithic eternity of ice and snow in Oslov, but with the constant humming variation of a human life.

And now Gersha thought that, if he’d discovered Tilrey’s treason in Bettevy on a perfect late-summer day, everything would have been different. He’d have realized what he realized now: joy flits away. Joy isn’t worth sacrificing to any principle.

_I wouldn’t have thrown him out. I would have asked him to stay at least the night, so I could listen and try to understand._ He knew it was a seditious thought. But there it was.

When he sat up at last, light was emptying from the east, the clouds over the lake turning a sullen amethyst. Forms flitted over the lawn, faster than birds, black against the sky—bats. He’d missed dinner. He’d have to say he’d been taken ill. The Duke—

“Are you all right, Gersha? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Your Grace.” Gersha stood up, a little shaky, and tried to straighten his tunic. He didn’t think he’d been weeping, but his throat felt scratchy, his eyes swollen.

“You’re not all right.” Stepping closer, Dalziel touched Gersha’s arm. He’d removed his jacket, and his white silk shirt shone ghostlike in the dusk. “What is it, my friend? Your young man leaving? He’ll be back soon enough.”

Gersha shook his head, feeling tears spring to his eyes. Without the camouflage of darkness, without his hours on the bench, he would probably have responded to Dalziel with cold formality and half-truths: _Why should that upset me? I’m used to his absence, and he’s not_ my _young man, as you observed yourself._

But now he had no time or patience for lies. Words burst from him: “No, he won’t. He’s gone across the lake.”

The Duke spoke with mild confusion: “I saw him off on the road to Senjy.”

“Then they must have changed course later. Or Tilrey slipped away from the convoy and headed off alone.” He knew his voice was ragged, didn’t care. “I’m tracking him with a device. I know.”

Dalziel’s face was unreadable in the near-dark; he’d gone very still. “This device of yours—is it always correct?”

Gersha nodded. “The Embassy is tracking him, too—they track us all. You probably know that. Which means that, when they find out he’s gone—”

“You needn’t worry about that. Truly, Fir Councillor, set your mind at rest. Your secretary will return on schedule.”

The Duke’s voice was firm and not in the least alarmed. Gersha peered at him through the dimness. “You _knew_ this?”

The Duke began taking methodical paces along the garden path toward the lake, gesturing to Gersha to follow. “Your Fir’n Linnett,” he said, moving in closer, “swore me to secrecy. This is a classified endeavor. You don’t have her permission to use that tracking device of yours, I imagine.”

“No,” Gersha admitted. He kept pace with Dalziel, rubbing his hands nervously. “I know Tilrey has a classified mission, but I assumed that was the trip to Senjy. You’re saying this trip to Resurgence is planned? He’s not disobeying orders?”

“Correct.” Dalziel’s hands were clasped sedately behind his back. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I hate to see you in distress. I was never told the purpose of the mission myself, only asked to provide three guardsmen, a route, and transportation. I do know the destination is a town called Placid, one of the largest in the Park.”

Why would Albertine send Tilrey to Resurgence? Gersha itched to demand an explanation from her, but he couldn’t betray Dalziel’s trust now. He’d have to wait for answers until Tilrey returned and they were safely on their way back to Oslov.

If Tilrey _did_ return. Gersha reached for the pendant he’d hung around his own neck; the ancient coin was cold in his palm. What could this mean on his pillow, if not a farewell?

When they reached the end of the garden terrace, Dalziel swung around and walked measuredly back toward the lights of the palace. “You don’t seem reassured, Councillor,” he said. “Please, give me the same trust I’ve given you. I’ve told you enough to get myself in hot water with Fir’n Linnett. Can we agree that none of this conversation will reach her?”

In the context of any intelligence operations Albertine might be running here, she was Gersha’s superior; withholding information from her could be treason. But he had no choice; fears were pressing on his heart, threatening to choke him if he kept silent. “Yes,” he said. “Will you promise me no reports to the Ambassador, either?”

“I think you have an inkling that I don’t like the Ambassador.” Dalziel chuckled, his voice taking on a warmer resonance. “But I like you, and it troubles me to see you troubled when perhaps I could help.”

Gersha drew a deep breath. He looked up and found the north star, something that was also a steady beacon in Oslov, and then he said, “I fear Tilrey doesn’t plan to return from this trip.”

He explained why as succinctly as he could, without mentioning Tilrey’s Dissidence, only that Tilrey was unhappy with certain aspects of Oslov life and seemed to have taken instantly to Harbour. Then he brought in the “phantom damned” as a potential refuge for a fleeing Oslov.

Dalziel nodded at each point as if it made perfect sense. “I’ve heard these stories of defectors, too,” he said. “Airplanes landing in the wilderness where no roads run, bearing tall folk who speak a foreign language and use ‘magic boxes.’ It may be a mere folktale, though; I’ve seen no proof.”

“ _I_ could find proof. I can keep tracking him.” Excitement was growing in Gersha, making him shiver all over. Maybe it was only manic desperation, but it felt like a much-needed surge of energy and purpose. “When Tilrey reaches the colony, if there is a colony, they’ll know how to remove his tracker. But until then, I can follow him. And if I catch up with him in time, I can . . .”

_Persuade him to come back?_ Yes, of course he could. He had to.

His path forward suddenly seemed as obvious as the shining one the rising moon cast on the lake. He was an Oslov equipped with all the resources of his civilization, operating in a primitive world. The lake and the forest wilderness were puny obstacles. He would pursue Tilrey, find him, and bring him home. Albertine would remain none the wiser. He would make this right.

He’d stopped walking, shivers running up and down his spine, staring at the lake and the light. He nearly jumped when Dalziel wheeled abruptly to face him.

The Duke spoke in a half-growl: “You want to leave the palace and chase Tilrey through Resurgence? Do you realize the risks you’d be running? Can you imagine how angry Fir’n Linnett would be with me if I knowingly let you leave?”

Normally the reproving tone would have brought Gersha down to earth, but he was floating far too high now. “Then you _won’t_ know I’m leaving,” he suggested, his plans forming like lightning. “Tell her I slipped away while your back was turned. As for the risks, I’ve been given plenty of local currency. I can buy any form of transport or armed protection I need. And you’ve seen for yourself that I can blend in here. No one needs to know where I come from.”

“You’re underestimating a place you know nothing about.” The Duke crossed his arms, his voice dipping toward the growl again. “I’ll speak plainly: this is a foolish journey to make on the basis of a suspicion. You’d be better off waiting to see what happens.”

“Until Tilrey’s tracker disappears?” No, Gersha couldn’t do that. For once in his cautious, circumspect life, he would take a leap of faith rather than waiting docilely to see if his hopes were fulfilled, or crushed and stomped on. He would make his own luck. _Don’t let joy flit away._

“No,” he said, his voice granite. “I am not going to wait. I absolve you of all responsibility for what happens to me.”

He turned away from the Duke, toward the palace. He had packing to do, maps to consult. He would hack his own tracker to make it look like he hadn’t left the palace. He’d go at first light. He’d need rations, tools, currency, Harbourer clothes, a boat—

“Gersha!” Strong hands were gripping his biceps, arresting his forward motion. The Duke stood before him, his eyes catching a whisper of moonlight. “Do you hear yourself?” he asked. “This behavior is unbecoming of your people, of the logical deliberation with which they usually act. This is _mad_.”

Gersha nearly pushed the Duke away, but a small catch in Dalziel’s voice held him still. “What do you care?” he asked. “Anyway, you’ve made it clear you don’t think much of us and our logic.”

“So you’re observant, too.” Dalziel released him. They were about the same height, and Gersha felt the other’s warm breath on his cheek. “Your people are good trading partners, honest and predictable, but as friends, they lack a certain warmth and spontaneity. You, though—the way you leap from cold to hot, from rational to mad, confounds me. How on earth do you get along in Oslov? Do you hide this side of yourself from your peers?”

“I’ve never . . .” Words dried up in Gersha’s throat. He’d always known he had some of his mother’s hot-blooded, sloppy, vulgar nature (as his uncle described it), despite his elite lineage on the other side. But only Tilrey really knew that secret part of him, and Tilrey was gone.

“I _am_ being irrational,” he said, low. “I know it.”

Dalziel ran a tentative, searching finger up Gersha’s cheekbone, so gentle he nearly brought tears to Gersha’s eyes. “Very irrational, very beautiful, and very passionate,” he said, as if he were appreciating an artwork. “You can’t live without that boy of yours, can you?”

Gersha didn’t speak or nod, but his breath caught in his throat.

Dalziel seemed to take this for a yes. And, instead of turning away from Gersha in exasperation, as any high-named Upstart would have done, he took a step back and said thoughtfully, “Well, now. Perhaps this plan of yours doesn’t have to be quite so mad after all. I can make arrangements, can give you three of my best guardsmen to keep you safe—no, I _insist_ ,” he went on, as Gersha opened his mouth to object.

“But I don’t want to be a—”

Dalziel continued in a tone that brooked no interruption: “If you slip away from here alone, you might have your throat slit before you even reach the port. But if you’re willing to accept my help—and no, my friend, I’m not actually giving you a choice—then your safe return is likely. Don’t speak, don’t object—just go up to your room and rest. I’ll have dinner brought to you. We can make excuses for your absence, at least for the first few days. My servants are discreet. No, as I said, I don’t need your opinion. You don’t know this place. It happens my way, or it doesn’t happen at all.”

Gersha closed his mouth, frustrated and relieved at once, then opened it again to say, “But why would you help me? Just because you don’t want to have to explain my slit throat to Albertine?”

“That’s certainly part of it. And I wouldn’t relish keeping you a prisoner here.” Dalziel gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Go to bed now, dear Fir Councillor. Your presence has been very diverting, so I intend to foster your endeavors. Your secrets will all be kept for you.”

“But how can I ever—” He was too much of a diplomat to think there wouldn’t be a price.

“We can discuss that after your safe return with your Tilrey beside you. All I ask is that you keep your eyes and ears open throughout the journey, and that you judge me and my choices in light of what you learn.” Dalziel caught Gersha’s hand briefly in his own and raised it to his lips. Their eyes met as he left a lingering, not-at-all-formal kiss on the palm and said, “Go now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Gersha's making a rash and ill-informed decision, as we all know. :) I hope I gave it enough motivation to be plausible. That's always one of the challenges of pushing a plotty plot forward...


	10. On the Road

Sleeping in a hayloft was a first that Tilrey hoped not to repeat. He rolled over and groaned, listening to rain patter on the rickety wooden roof. “My back feels like nails are being driven into it.”

“Give yourself a good stretch to get the cricks out,” said Gavril Ardaly, standing below him in the barn’s doorway. Smoke bled from between the sergeant’s fingers—one of those illicit stimulant pipes beloved by soldiers. Behind him was the deep green of trees heavy with rain. “Never slept rough before?” he asked.

“Not really.” Tilrey sat up and stretched, wincing. He fished straw out of his hair and collar, limbered up a little, and forced himself down for fifteen pushups. Ah, that felt better. “When’s the wagon getting here?”

“Any minute—Brownell and Bouchard went to get it. Bouchard’s good with horses. Come eat some rations.”

To minimize their chances of drawing the townspeople’s attention, they’d rented this barn on the outskirts of Essex from a farmer for the night. As Ardaly had painstakingly explained to Tilrey, they couldn’t embark immediately on their overland journey to Placid. The route of 69 kilometers would take two days by horse-drawn wagon, but the first leg was the longest and most hazardous. To reach a town before nightfall, they needed to leave in the morning.

Tilrey climbed down from the hayloft and ate a few of the freeze-dried fish strips Gavril was offering. He couldn’t stop himself from grimacing.

Gavril watched with amusement. “You wouldn’t last long in basic training. Or garrisoned in the Wastes.”

“Yeah? Maybe I’d surprise you.” Tilrey was getting accustomed to the sergeant’s deadpan ribbing. It reminded him of Jorning, Magistrate Linden’s driver, who’d been his friend and ally. “When I was growing up in ’Skein, we used to sneak out past curfew in the dead of winter. Practically got lost in a white-out once.”

“You’re from Thurskein?” Gavril’s blue gaze had sharpened. “Me, too. Sector Nine.”

_I know, it’s in your accent._ Tilrey smiled obliquely. “Sector Six for me.”

“You talk like a Reddan. I just assumed you were from one of those snobby little Outer Ring families that think they’re practically Strutters, and—” Gavril broke off, his scowl fading, as they both heard the unmistakable clip-clop of horses approaching. “Good. We can be off now.”

The wagon, designed for freight, had two raised seats in front and was pulled by a pair of sturdy-necked chestnuts. They were long haulers, not elegant, but Tilrey still found their every shake and shiver fascinating.

The guardsman named Bouchard had installed himself in the foremost seat, holding the reins, while the other two guardsmen shared the rear one, primitive rifles slung across their chests. Instead of the Duke’s livery, they wore nondescript dun jackets and shirts—to impersonate rural traders, they’d explained.

Brownell, the highest ranking of the trio, beckoned to the Oslovs. “All the way in back, Fira. You want to stay out of sight.”

The back of the wagon was covered with tight brown canvas strung to a frame. Tilrey had hoped for a view, but it was a dark, hot box. He found himself a seat among the crates and bales of goods, then cursed as the wagon pulled into the road with a lurch that landed him on his ass.

He saw with a certain satisfaction that Gavril hadn’t stayed upright, either. “Why can’t these people just invent batteries?” the sergeant groused quietly. “What I’d do for a good ATV right now.”

The road got no smoother as they went. Peeling up a bit of canvas to make himself a peephole, Tilrey saw they were traveling what must have been a paved road in the Tangle era. Here and there was a remnant of neat asphalt shoulder, but the rest was a mess of gravel, dirt, and larger debris around which the horses picked their way.

On either side, the road was shrouded by the green curtain of forest, so dense that Tilrey wondered if daylight penetrated its borders. The trees rose nearly as high as he could see, maple and beech and ash and the pointy spruce and firs he knew from Oslov.

A rich scent of growth and decay suffused the air. Except for the steady clops of the horses and the occasional cry of a bird, the place was weirdly silent. How far did the desolation stretch? What was _in_ there?

True Hearthers, for one. Tilrey recited the coordinates of their secret base to himself, as he’d been doing ever since Irin Dartán entrusted him with the information. But now the numbers were more than an abstract talisman of freedom; they were a real place, close by _._ He didn’t have a GPS, but he was pretty sure Gavril did, on the handheld with which he’d contact the Embassy in case of emergency.

Unbidden, a detailed scenario blossomed in Tilrey’s head: He was slipping the handheld out of Gavril’s pocket while the man slept. He was leaping off the end of the wagon and running as fast as he could, losing himself in the seething green. How good it would feel to run and walk for hours, for days, toward a certain destination. Perhaps even toward reunions with old friends.

He couldn’t run away and _live_ in the hidden settlement, of course. He had to return to Redda, where he was more useful. But the more he thought about it, the more he longed to see for himself what Oslovs had built in this wild place, free from Whyberg’s Levels. How had they worked things out? Were they equal at last, or did they have ranks of their own the way Harbourers did?

Luckily for Tilrey, perhaps, Gavril showed no signs of dozing off. On the other side of the wagon, the sergeant had made his own peephole and was blowing smoke through it. “Reminds me of the Wastes,” he grunted, “only a lot greener. Weird thing, but sometimes I miss the open spaces.”

Tilrey didn’t find it weird. “Is that where you met Krisha—in the Wastes?”

Gavril nodded. “Krisha’d been living on the base since he was a kid. His family was killed in an Outer feud, their settlement burned down, and our troops took him in. When I got there, he was about nineteen, and the garrison was using him for . . . well, you know.”

Tilrey could imagine. Most Oslovs barely saw Outers as human beings, and a bunch of bored soldiers on Wastes detail weren’t likely to take in anyone out of charity.

“Fuckers,” he muttered, feeling an unexpected stab of empathy for Krisha. “So, did you come along and save him from all that?”

His words had an ironic edge—was anyone ever really “saved” from their past?—but Gavril answered earnestly: “Did my best. Central Command sent me in to take charge, clean up the garrison a little. I figured we could make a real citizen out of Krisha if he had skills besides . . . you know. So I taught him to fight and shoot, apprenticed him to one of our supply pilots. He took to flying and mechanics real quick. Got the men to stop bugging him, too. But one day when I was off-base, this asshole captain flew in. He liked the looks of Krisha, I guess. When I came back, they were both gone.”

Gavril sounded as desolate as if it had happened yesterday. Tilrey couldn’t help tweaking his sentimentality a little. “I’m guessing _you_ ‘liked Krisha’s looks,’ too. Or were you content just to be his mentor?”

The sergeant pulled his head back inside the wagon, a blush spreading down his neck. “That was different. Didn’t make him do nothing, ever. I cared about him.”

_And did he care about you? Or was he just desperate for a chance to stop servicing the whole platoon?_ Tilrey permitted himself a slight arch of the brows. “How’d Krisha end up with Linnett?”

Gavril took a puff and stuck his head through the canvas again. “That bastard of a captain sold Krisha to the Sanctioned Brothel. Linnett found him there. I didn’t know any of that till I found him again, a few years later. After that, we’d get together whenever I was in Redda. I begged Krisha to leave the Magistrate, but he had an easy life there, he said. He and Linnett always got on well, at least until you came.”

“Me?”

Now it was the sergeant’s turn to give Tilrey a tart, knowing look. “He said you were spoiled, and you stole the old man’s heart and turned the whole household on end. Always whining and complaining and changing your mind about whether you wanted to be there.”

“Krisha said that, eh?” Rage lodged in Tilrey’s throat, and he stuck his head outside. As the fresh breeze slapped his face, along with the cool drizzle and the scents of strange, wild places ( _the settlement_ ), it came home to him: he wasn’t in Oslov anymore. He didn’t have to use polite euphemisms when he talked about his past.

“I can see why Krisha thought I was spoiled,” he said, turning to face Gavril again. “If I’d spent my teen years being gang-raped by soldiers in the Wastes, I’m sure I’d have been overjoyed to deal with just Malsha Linnett, too. In fact, I would have been happy for any warm, secure bed I could find.”

He half-expected Gavril to laugh and ask what could be so bad about sharing the home and bed of the most powerful man in Oslov. But the sergeant just stared at him—first blankly, then with a disturbed look.

“Linnett hurt you?” he asked. “He made you do . . . nasty things?”

Tilrey bit the inside of his cheek, not sure whether he was stifling laughter or something else. “Curious, are you?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. Physically, no. Malsha’s tastes in bed are pretty vanilla. I’m sure he didn’t hurt your precious Krisha, either, if that’s what worries you.” Seeing Gavril relax a little, he went on, “No, what gets Malsha going is fucking with people’s heads.”

“You mean . . .?”

“It’s hard to explain. But you might as well know, because he’s sure to try it on both of us. Tell him as little about yourself as you can. How you feel about Krisha, for instance—keep that quiet.”

Gavril was looking at Tilrey with a raw, open unhappiness that might actually have been empathy. “And you agreed to go see the bastard again? Negotiate with him? After he messed with you that way?”

Tilrey shrugged, disarmed. Did it show on his face that he was still a little afraid of Malsha? “Well, he didn’t kill me the first time. At least this time I won’t have to sleep with him.”

“He won’t lay a fucking finger on you unless he wants to go through me.”

The tone was so fierce that Tilrey grinned, thinking Gavril must be joking. The sergeant didn’t grin back, and Tilrey was uncomfortably reminded of Gersha. _You always wanted to save me, didn’t you?_

“I can watch out for myself, you know.” He stuck his head outdoors again, and they didn’t talk for a while.

***

“Damn, damn, damn,” Gersha fretted. He raised his handheld toward the east, trying to catch the fading tower signal. The sailboat pitched, and he lost his footing and half-sat, half-fell on the rain-slick deck.

When he struggled to his feet again, holding the device protectively against his heavy coat, he caught two of the Duke’s guardsmen snickering. A stern look from him made them return to their tasks.

The lake spread out gray and dimpled with raindrops, while clouds sat heavy on the mountain peaks. Gersha’s mood was no sunnier: he was losing track of Tilrey. The Bettevy towers were receding, and he’d counted on an Oslov satellite that was due to pass overhead tonight. But its signal remained elusive, making him realize he might have, at best, a brief daily window of reception.

The Duke had been as good as his word, arranging protection and transportation while Gersha slept. Woken by a grumpy guardsman, Gersha had been smuggled out of the palace at dawn, dozing on the pitching seat of a coach with bags and boxes of supplies piled around him.

He’d packed only three things himself: Tilrey’s pendant (around his neck), his handheld, and _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour_, which he’d tucked into the pocket of his new, Harbourer-style coat. Apparently Tilrey hadn’t expected to read much where he was going.

The village of Essex was growing larger, though still dwarfed by the mountains beyond. Behind a modest wharf rose a bluff where once-stately mansions roosted, wreathed in vines; Gersha’s sharp eyes picked out broken windows and collapsed roofs. What had this town been once? he wondered. How much of Harbour was the slowly decaying museum of a lost world?

“Stay close to us on shore, Fir,” said Nestor, the heavy-jowled guardsman who gave orders to the other two. “The town can be rough, but we’ll find you decent lodgings.”

“Why do we need to spend the night here?” Gersha knew he sounded plaintive, but he needed to catch up before he lost that signal for good. “It’s barely afternoon now.”

The guardsman scowled at the shore. “We have to set out for Placid at first light. Too late now.”

“But the first stage is less than fifty kilometers. Surely even horses can handle that in a half-day.”

Nestor ran a hand through his sparse, rain-damp hair. “Rogues leave no man alive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t want to get caught in the Park after dark, Fir. Trust me.”

***

As the afternoon wore on, the old road began to twist and climb, rising from the forest floor into the foothills. Vistas opened above and below them: rocky crags reaching into the sky, oceans of trees swelling to mist-shrouded mountains. Gold and scarlet flecked the sea of green; the leaves were turning, and the moist fecundity of their decay was everywhere.

Tilrey was so busy staring that he barely noticed light bleeding from the iron-gray sky until they hit a low stretch, crossing a valley floor. As the shadows clustered thicker, the guardsmen’s agitation seemed to grow. Bouchard kept using his whip on the horses, clucking angrily.

“That’s the fastest they’ll go?” Brownell barked.

Bouchard wiped his forehead. “They’re winded. Been a long day. We should be in Keene in five or ten.”

“Better be right, ’cause it’s almost fucking dark out there.”

In their stuffy little den, Tilrey and Gavril exchanged glances. It was hard to see much, but Gavril appeared to be fiddling with his rifle.

“Whom are we so worried about meeting after dark?” Tilrey asked. He’d been hearing these vague whispers about “wilderness” and “dangers” the whole time he’d been in Harbour. Surely the “phantom damned” weren’t considered a real, concrete threat?

“Wolves,” Bouchard said.

“Catamounts,” said Santos, the third guardsman. “They scream like banshees and leap from the trees.”

Brownell snorted. “The cats won’t bother us if we don’t bother them. Nah, it’s Rogues you gotta worry about.”

Tilrey exchanged another glance with Gavril, who shrugged. “Rogues?”

“Godforsaken crazies who live out here. When it’s just a few of them, no worries, but lately they’ve been organizing. They raid wagon trains looking for women to carry off. Then they cut the men’s throats and take the loot. Sometimes they take the corpses, too, to give their stew a nice meaty flavor—”

“What’s he saying?” Gavril hissed in Oslov. “It’s too fast for me.”

“There are people out here like Outers, only more aggressive. They—”

A piercing whistle split the silence. At first it seemed to fill the entire forest, and Tilrey pressed his hands to his ears. Then it tapered off mournfully, and he located it in the woods to their left.

“God save us! That’s them!” Brownell and Santos were frantically loading their unwieldy rifles, while Bouchard screamed at the horses and laid on the whip. “Run, you bastards!”

Gavril staggered across the lurching wagon toward the source of the sound, rifle clutched to his side, just as a second eerie whistle sounded, this time from the right. If the first one had been slightly behind the wagon, this one was in front.

_They’re surrounding us._ The wagon was pitching wildly now, the tired horses forcing themselves into a canter. All Tilrey could do was cling to a crate and watch as Gavril crouched, holding tight to the wagon’s frame, and poked the muzzle of his rifle through the canvas. In the bleary light from outside, Tilrey saw the sergeant peer through the bulky scope, each motion surprisingly fluid and graceful.

When the gun fired, the clap was thunderous. Tilrey went flat on his belly, his heart drumming against his ribs, as the horses launched into a wild gallop.

Two answering shots from the woods made him cover his head, sweat gluing the deerskin to his ribs. “It’s okay,” Gavril hissed—and then something about being out of range, before the frantic, hammering hoofbeats drowned him out.

By the time the horses’ gallop slowed to a trot, the sweat soaking Tilrey had turned cold. He still felt the gallop in every muscle, and his fingertips ached from their grip on the rough wooden planks beneath him.

“Are they still coming?” he whispered. But before the words were out, Santos said in a gasp, “Fucking made it. There’s the inn.”

Tilrey released a long breath. The whole time he’d been imagining what he’d do if they were overtaken. Fight first, of course, but he wasn’t trained like Gavril or the guardsmen. If it came to a knife at his throat, would he say he was an Oslov, offer himself for ransom? Would the forest dwellers care?

Albertine Linnett really should have briefed him on the woods being full of cannibalistic psychopaths. Suddenly, dropping in on the True Hearth seemed a lot less feasible.

As they came to a creaky stop, Tilrey crawled toward Gavril, who was snapping his rifle back in its case. “Thanks for—you know.”

The sergeant shrugged. “Just doin’ my job.”

“What did you see out there?”

“Maybe nothing. Night vision distorts things. But—”

“But?”

“Looked like a man with long white hair and wolf fangs. Staring right at me, aiming a rifle.”


	11. Wolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware: this chapter is the reason for the Graphic Violence warning! I can't guarantee there won't be more violence, but this is as intense as it gets. And yes, there will still be a happy ending, just not for some of the poor redshirts. ): Thank you so much for reading!

At midnight, Gersha finally recaptured the signal from Tilrey’s tracker. The satellite must be overhead.

Alone in a tiny, fetid bedroom in Essex’s one and only inn, he grinned wildly at his handheld. The signal came from one of the old Tangle roads between Essex and Placid, and it was stationary, the satellite image showing a handful of houses tucked in the mountains. A rustic lodging, no doubt. Tilrey was on course; if he was planning to defect, he hadn’t yet. Perhaps he was counting on slipping away during the return trip.

When Gersha caught up to him, he wouldn’t take it well. They’d fight again, and Gersha would have to keep his cool and insist on the truth.

And if Tilrey confessed everything, then what? Gersha darkened his handheld, conserving the battery, and rolled over. The room was pitch-dark and stuffy; the mattress might well have been stuffed with twigs.

Did Tilrey despise Oslov that much? He still cared about Gersha; his drunken attempt at a goodbye was proof of that. What if Gersha promised him that life at home would go back to the way it had been? That he’d simply forget about everything Bors Dartán had said?

_It’s too late for that,_ Tilrey answered in his imagination. _What’s done is done. You know what I am. You’d always hate me for dragging you down from your precious moral high ground—and sooner or later, you’d turn me in._

Was that true? Could he really do such a thing? Still in his imagination, Gersha fell on his knees and pleaded: _What high ground? I’ve already given up everything. If you want, if you really want, I’ll even stay_ here _with you._

The Duke was right. Gersha was mad. By running off like this, he’d compromised his diplomatic mission, his status at home, his ideals. He’d eaten lake perch cooked over a fire tonight. He hadn’t brushed his teeth. The dirt of Harbour was under his nails; his clothes and hair stunk of woodsmoke. And now, these thoughts—they were nonsense. He was still an Oslov. He couldn’t stay in Harbour.

He thought of the book in his coat pocket and wondered if Edvard Linnett had gone mad like this. If his blood had fizzed with energy like Gersha’s right now. If he’d been equally terrified and . . . happy?

_I’m coming to you_ , a voice inside him whispered to the distant, blinking signal that was Tilrey. _Wait for me._

He slept deeply, dreaming of Tilrey in his arms, and woke just before dawn. When the guardsmen drove up in the coach they’d rented for the journey, he was standing out in front of the inn, a nondescript figure in a traveler’s heavy coat, staring at a hectic salmon streak on the horizon. He’d been careful not to speak more than a few words to anyone except the Duke’s men, and no one seemed to have looked twice at him.

Nestor gave him a hand up onto the seat. Gersha settled himself and took out his book—then slipped it back in his pocket. The breeze riffling the oak leaves, the distant splashing of the lake, the crowing of poultry—all of it had become strangely fascinating, as if he were seeing and hearing clearly for the first time. Yes, Edvard Linnett must have felt this way.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I want to see this wilderness.”

***

Larger than Essex and smaller than Bettevy, the town of Placid humped itself around a skinny little lake with a mountain looming at one end. The sight of his destination should have reassured Tilrey, but mere hours after fleeing for his life, he didn’t feel quite ready to transform back into a scheming diplomat.

None of them had slept well at the rickety inn in Keene, where the half-dead horses were finally watered, fed, and rested. The next morning, returning to the road, they kept quiet as if by mutual agreement. Tilrey hovered at his peephole as if at a guard station, straining his eyes for movement in the trees and his ears for distant whistles. Gavril did the same on his side of the wagon.

They passed a few dozen more breathtaking views, and at one point the horses halted with a jerk to let a herd of deer cross the road, but otherwise the journey was uneventful. It was still several hours before twilight of a brisk, sunny day when they reached the farms on the outskirts of Placid.

A few more minutes, and the wilderness was gone. Most of Placid was brick like Bettevy, but these streets were paved almost smoothly. Tilrey gave a start when he saw electric lights in a shop window, illuminating garish bolts of fabric. “They’re wired?”

Brownell pointed out a line of primitive streetlamps stretching down the street. “The Resurgents are infidels. They want to be like you—build their own Light Web.”

Tilrey filed away this information for Albertine Linnett, while Gavril growled at him, “Keep out of sight. Those guys in black? I think they’re Resurgent troops.”

Sure enough, men in tight black pullovers and trousers loitered on street corners, looking far more focused, disciplined, and self-satisfied than the Duke’s police. Some had rifles slung over their shoulders, and all seemed to be watching the passersby. Their black shirts bore a crudely printed white symbol—the lightning-bolt that Tilrey knew from Oslov as the Spark.

_We consider Resurgence a growing threat_ , Albertine had told him during the briefing. _They’re making active efforts to appropriate our technology, though they still lack the knowledge base and infrastructure to use it properly. If they catch you, they may hold you for ransom, even try to use you as a source of intel. They won’t believe you when you say you know nothing._

Tilrey stayed out of sight, peering obliquely through the peephole until they reached a structure so enormous it blocked his view of everything else. Made of gray-brown bricks, with columns and a half-dome, it sported a faded bas-relief of five interlocking rings. The plaza in front of this mammoth building was dark with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of soldiers—swarming like flies, only more orderly.

Tilrey jerked backward and closed the gap in the canvas, through which he still heard Harbourer voices going through drills. Albertine had said Placid was safely at the far end of Resurgence; she must not have known soldiers would be so thick on the ground.

“Now, those are real troops,” Gavril said, pitching his voice for their ears only. “Their weapons are shit, but Colonel Thibault knows what she’s doing when it comes to organization. Must command a lot of loyalty.”

“What is this place?” Tilrey asked the guardsmen, trying to ignore the dread growing in his stomach.

Two of them shrugged, but Brownell said authoritatively, “It’s from the old days, before the Collapse—a sports arena. People came from all over the world to see contests here, my grandma told me. Now birds nest in the rafters.”

_And soldiers show off their shiny rifles._ Tilrey knew what Gavril meant when he said the Resurgents were real troops; they reminded him of Oslovs. If the chaos of Bettevy was unsettling, this rival form of order was more dangerous.

For the first time, he wondered if the mission could be a trap. Malsha was perfectly capable of handing them over to Colonel Thibault, even if his daughter refused to consider such a possibility.

But if Malsha did that, then they wouldn’t get any time together. And Tilrey was fairly sure what Malsha actually wanted was time with him. _Where would be the fun in just handing you to those black-shirted brutes?_

They had an emergency beacon to use if things went south. They’d spend no more than one night in Linnett’s house and head back. He was ready for this. He was _ready._

Once they left the downtown area and headed into the suburbs, the soldiers disappeared. Breathing more easily, Tilrey opened the peephole again. The horses were clip-clopping down a maple-lined street within sight of the lake. Well-appointed three-story brick houses rose on either side, each with a good spread of pasture, chicken coops, and outbuildings.

The street ended in a hilly cul-de-sac, and they headed up it along a gravel driveway. Sheep placidly munched grass. “Is that it?” Tilrey asked, staring at the boxy brick house at the top.

It was grander than any apartment or vacation residence in Oslov, but after the majestic views through which they’d traveled, Malsha’s new home looked modest, almost cozy. No palace for him.

The drive swung around and deposited them in front of an entry portico with a brick archway. Bouchard reined in the horses, and Tilrey and Gavril tumbled out of the wagon, glad to stretch their legs.

Turning his back to the house, Tilrey saw terraced gardens falling toward a pine grove, beyond which the lake spread glistening in the late-afternoon sun. In the strong orange light, everything looked sharp-edged, orderly, beautiful. Yes, this was Malsha’s touch, all right.

He picked out a hunched figure on the closest terrace—a gardener on his knees pulling weeds. No, not a gardener. The figure straightened and came toward them holding a cane, walking briskly with no apparent need of support.

Tilrey’s throat closed as he recognized the gait. A door inside him seemed to slam and bolt itself. “That’s him.”

“I thought he was eighty-something,” Gavril muttered.

“He’s always been hale for his age.” Tilrey heard his own voice drop into a familiar expressionless register. _I’m blank. I’m not here. You can’t hurt me._

“You okay, lad?”

Tilrey turned from the approaching Linnett to see the sergeant’s blue eyes focused on him. _Why do you care?_ But it didn’t matter why; Gavril’s steady gaze was keeping him in the here and now. “Sure,” he said, giving his shoulders a little shake. “Let me talk first.”

***

Through his doze and the dull hoofbeats, Gersha thought he heard the guardsmen mocking him. A quick exchange of Harbourer words, followed by smothered laughter.

He opened his eyes and sat up, sending _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour_ tumbling off his lap. Before it could fall out of the coach, he caught it and slipped it into his coat pocket. “Are we making good time, then?”

The two men who sat facing him, Nestor and Overton, had gone abruptly silent. The third, Foster, was busy guiding the horses from his perch in front. “Decent time,” said Nestor after a moment.

_Had_ they been making fun of him, or was he just being oversensitive again? _Green hells, I hope I wasn’t drooling._ Gersha flashed Nestor and Overton a benign, lordly smile, then promptly forgot about them as he took in his surroundings.

When he dozed off, they’d been deep in the woods. Now the hillside fell away vertiginously on their left, where a sea of trees billowed out to the sinuous purple mountains. Perched on the western horizon like Tilrey’s copper penny, the sun set everything aflame—treetops, crags, saplings, weeds.

Gersha’s breath caught. For an instant, it was too much—all this grandeur and desolation, sealed into a strange orderly rightness by the dying light. He was almost relieved when the road left the cliffside and plunged back into the forest, which covered the coach with its dense evening shade. The next moment, he wished he’d thought to use his handheld to snap a photo.

Something whistled, long and clear and close by on the right. A night bird? Nestor sat up straight, listening.

“How long until we reach the—”

Nestor’s furious gesture silenced Gersha. The lead guardsman reached for his rifle as a whistle sounded again, on the left now.

Something sang over Gersha’s head, high and fierce as a mosquito. He had no time to duck, even to think of ducking. He was still looking at Nestor when the man’s throat exploded, blood spurting out and soaking the dirty-white collar.

Gersha couldn’t move. Everything seemed to have slowed down and sped up at once; nothing made sense. Nestor was choking and trying to wrest a skinny projectile from his throat with both hands. _Arrow._

Someone was screaming in Harbourer. The horses began to gallop, knocking Gersha sideways on the high seat. As he hung on for dear life, thunder clapped behind them, and he heard a new scream, not a human one.

The coach lurched to a terrible, grinding stop. Gersha only missed being thrown out by sliding into a fetal huddle on the floor. When he regained control of his limbs and opened his eyes, everything was still.

His face was sticky-wet, but he felt no pain. Nestor lay doubled over, unmoving. Foster and Overton were gone. Someone below on the road was muttering softly, swearing or pleading.

This wasn’t real. He was still asleep. Gersha was a Councillor of Oslov, so he supposed he should be taking some action, nightmare or not, but instead he flashed back to his very first hike with Tilrey in the woods of the Southern Range. He’d been leery of wolves, and Tilrey had laughed and promised to fight them off. They never had met a wolf in those woods, though, over years of long walks, not once.

Now, at long last, Gersha was meeting a wolf. A wolf—no, a man wearing a wolf’s skin and teeth—had leapt up on the running board. He was staring down at Gersha, blocking the evening sky, his face split in a maniacal grin.

The man—a scrawny boy, really, pasty and shirtless with long, dyed-white hair—yelled something in Harbourer that Gersha didn’t understand. He sounded jubilant. His real teeth, visible behind the wolf fangs, were black stubs.

The wolf-boy pounced. Gersha tried to leap from the other side of the coach, but arms caught him from behind, and before he knew it, the wolf-boy and a second wolf-boy were dragging him down into the grass.

The first thing he saw there was Foster, lying on his back with blood spreading on his jacket. He was breathing, his chest heaving painfully. He reached toward Gersha, but the wolf-boys yanked Gersha past him and forced him onto his knees.

Gersha could feel the jagged gravel of the road through his trousers. It hurt. Someone was still pleading in a frantic undertone, and now he saw it was the third guardsmen, Overton, also on his knees. A burly wolf-boy held Overton’s arms pinioned and a knife to his throat.

There were maybe a half-dozen attackers in all, swarming all over the coach, pale against the dusk. Some had dyed their hair dead white, Gersha observed in a detached way, and some preferred bloodred. Some had wolf teeth, while others had painted skulls on their faces. Some had crude rifles like the guardsmen’s, others bows and long knives. Aside from their bare chests, they could have been the bloodthirsty Outers and Feudals of his childhood nightmares.

“You can take everything!” Overton was gasping beside him. “Just take it!”

A deep voice called down something authoritative, like the answer to a question. Gersha looked up and found a broad-chested man standing high on the coach seat, wearing a headdress adorned with the furry red fruits that Gersha had noticed along the roadside just a few hours ago. (What were they called again? _Sumac_ , Nestor had said.)

“Got it, sir!” said the wolf-boy who was holding Overton. And he clutched the begging guardsman tight like a lover and drew his knife across the man’s throat.

For an instant, there was no blood. Then it came all at once, and that was the moment Gersha realized he was awake, and he was going to die.

As he watched Overton gurgle and thrash in his murderer’s arms, his severed jugular soaking the boy’s impassive face, Gersha’s whole body came alive again. His throat closed; his heart pounded; his fingers and toes tingled. No one was holding him; he scrambled to his hands and knees and began crawling away.

Hands pulled him back. Hoarse voices cackled with laughter. _Rogues leave no man alive_ , Gersha remembered Nestor muttering, and he knew that he, unarmed, had no hope of ever leaving this spot.

He stopped struggling. He let them drag him back onto his knees. He reached into his coat and shirt and pulled out Tilrey’s pendant and held it tight, closing his eyes. He had no desire to see his murderers.

He saw only Tilrey showing him the Tangle coin, Tilrey reaching down a hand to help him up, Tilrey lying beside him in bed. Blue eyes. Radiant smile. Happy fatigue. A trust and closeness he’d never known with anyone else. Joy flits away, but at least he’d known joy.

“May you live a long, long time, my love,” he whispered, “and may your last moment be bright.”

He braced himself for the bite of the knife, for his own last moment, but it didn’t come. Close to him, a boy’s braying voice said, “He’s talking nonsense. He’s one of the damned.”

“Just finish him,” a deeper voice intervened.

“But it’s bad luck!”

“One of the damned?” It was the authoritative voice that had spoken before—the older man with the headdress.

Then a strong hand was under Gersha’s chin, wrenching his face around, forcing him to look into small, pale blue eyes. “It’s true? You’re a damned wretch from the north? Why aren’t you with your people?”

He couldn’t find breath to speak. Several hands were digging into his coat pockets, pulling out his personal effects. One of the younger voices yelled, “He’s got a demon box! Damned, I tell you!”

_My handheld. My lifeline to him._ Gersha did struggle then, until they forced him down and his lips kissed the dirt. Again he waited for the knife. He was still waiting even after the leader barked, “Not a mark on this one! He’s our prize, boys. Let’s see how much they’ll pay to get him back.”


	12. Old and New Acquaintances

Malsha Linnett still wore white. His loose coat was cut like a Harbourer’s now, and he had thick-soled slippers instead of boots, but everything was that one non-color, making him stand out like a piece of Oslov on the vibrant green lawn.

He stopped a meter or so from Tilrey and surveyed him through large-framed glasses. The crags and hollows of his face had intensified, but you could still see the outlines of the square chin, the high cheekbones, the shapely lips.

After a moment, he said, “The buckskin suits you nicely. Your hair needs a wash, though.”

Part of Tilrey, a part he’d spent the past five years trying to outgrow, was ready to respond to the command by bobbing his head and saying, “Yes, Fir,” and then trudging dutifully inside to wash his hair in whatever facilities the house offered.

Instead, he stared coldly back. “You look older, Fir.”

“So do you, lad. Thirty this year, aren’t you? Coming into your prime.”

There was no leer on Malsha’s face, but the sharp eyes traveled up and down Tilrey’s body in a way that made him itch and straighten his spine. “Yes,” he said curtly. “Nice spread you’ve got. I suppose those armed-to-the-teeth soldiers downtown don’t bother you?”

Irritation flitted across Malsha’s face. “The Colonel’s way of displaying her power is so unsubtle. But you needn’t worry about them coming up here; we won’t be disturbed.” He hadn’t moved his gaze. “I always knew you’d age without losing much of your bloom. Still working out, I see.”

_Don’t react; he wants you to_. “Are we going to get down to business, Fir? We’re scheduled to leave tomorrow at first light.”

“Of course. Where are my manners?” Malsha raised a pale arm and beckoned to someone behind Tilrey. “You’ve come such a long way; you must have some refreshment.” His eyes paused on Gavril, who still stood protectively beside Tilrey. “And who’s this?”

Tilrey introduced the sergeant. Instead of offering his own hand for Malsha to clasp, the way a Laborer would do for an Upstart, Gavril pumped the disgraced Magistrate’s hand. Staring straight into his eyes, he said, “If you don’t mind, I’m not gonna call you ‘Fir.’ Doesn’t seem appropriate after the way you screwed over the Republic.”

“Sergeant,” Tilrey muttered. Albertine had instructed him to give Malsha at least the minimum of respect he was used to commanding, to keep him in good humor.

But Malsha laughed delightedly. “Frankness. I like that. You’re quite right, Sergeant, and you must dine with us.” He snapped his fingers. “We’ll eat Harbourer-style, sitting at my table—it’s so much more civilized. Krisha, could you show Rishka and Sergeant Ardaly to their rooms? I trust the Duke’s men have already been accommodated.”

“Yes, Fir,” said a deep voice behind them, with an unmistakable accent that to Tilrey’s ears still sounded coarse.

Taken by surprise, Ardaly swung around with an unmilitary look of near-panic on his face. Tilrey turned with less hurry.

There stood Krisha—still slender-waisted and rugged, with hooded dark eyes and cheekbones like scythes. When Tilrey knew him in Redda, the driver had dyed his hair pale blond so it clashed with his brows. Now it had returned to its natural glossy black, a crow’s wing sweeping across his eyes, which suited him better.

Gavril’s eyes were wet and his cheeks flushed, as if he was restraining an urge to fold the younger man in his arms. For his part, Krisha gave no sign that he knew the sergeant aside from a grimace tugging at his lips. “Come along then, Fira,” he said tonelessly. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

“Wait a moment, Krisha.” Malsha joined them at the edge of the drive. “Do you and the sergeant know each other?”

Krisha winced visibly. He clearly knew, as Tilrey did, that the more Malsha knew about you, the more he could (and would) hurt you.

Tilrey shot a pointed glance at Gavril: _I told you to be careful._ But the sergeant only shrugged, apparently unashamed to wear his heart on his sleeve. “Yeah, we met at Base G-5. I’m the one who got him flying lessons.”

Malsha smiled a small, dry smile. “Then I must thank you, Sergeant Ardaly. Thanks to those skills, Krisha flew us both here from Redda after I ‘screwed over the Republic,’ as you put it.” The smile widened. “How lovely, then. We’ll have a reunion of sorts on both sides. Krisha, set a place for yourself at the table as well, and instruct Jack to wait on us.”

Krisha bobbed his head, and the old man’s eyes returned to Tilrey again, coolly observant, looking for weak spots. “My cook slaughtered a pig this morning. It’s delicious as long as you don’t think too hard about it—swine are rather intelligent animals. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have my afternoon nap. An old man at death’s door needs his rest.”

With that, he swept past them—still moving with all the majesty of someone wearing a Councillor’s robe of office—and into the house.

Krisha tried to disappear along with his master, but Gavril caught up with him. Under the portico of the house, he cornered the younger man and began speaking rapidly in a low voice—without touching him, Tilrey noticed.

Krisha always had a habit of startling at sudden noises or touches. In their two years living together, Tilrey had found it bizarre that Malsha’s driver could be both so brutish and so high-strung. Now he felt an uncomfortable pinch of empathy.

Gavril was saying urgently, “I know you’re surprised, love. Wasn’t any way to warn you. But if you’d only give me a second to explain—”

Giving them their privacy, Tilrey continued into the house’s foyer. To his relief, Malsha wasn’t lurking there; good as his word, he’d gone up for a nap. And why not? He knew Tilrey couldn’t leave till he’d gotten what he came for.

Trying not to feel like a rat in a trap, Tilrey examined the neat, spacious interior: white-washed walls, waxed maple floors, cozy sofas, and a stone hearth with crimson-and-white dishes displayed on the mantel. White, he couldn’t help noticing, was the dominant color. _Malsha may have his precious Harbourer retirement, but he’ll always be an Oslov._

A snaggle-toothed woman in a calf-length dress and white apron bustled in, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Can I help you, lad?” she asked in Harbourer, then took a second look and curtsied hastily. “You’re the guest, aren’t you, sir? Understand me all right? I’m Mrs. Desautels, the housekeeper.”

He nodded. “Could you show me to my room?”

“Of course, of course, sir. The master said you’d want the corner room so you could have a view. Said you always liked to see the sunsets.”

Her lips twisted as she conveyed this sentiment, as if she knew a favor from Malsha could be a curse in disguise. “Nice of him,” Tilrey said, following her up a flight of golden maple stairs into a quiet white hallway.

She opened the door. “Oh, he’s always so _thoughtful_ , the master is.”

The corner room had a wraparound view of the lake from a windowseat. Reddening maple leaves rustled just beyond the glass. The brass bed bore a fluffy white counterpane, and the stone hearth had an iron kettle on a frame.

“Thoughtful indeed,” Tilrey said neutrally, liking the room more than he wanted to.

While Mrs. Desautels pointed out his baggage (already piled on the hearthrug) and the amenities, Tilrey went straight to the map on the wall. Nailed above the bureau, enormous and hand-drawn, it seemed to encompass most of Bettevy, the lake, Placid, and the Park. He leaned in to peer at the empty spaces between towns, searching for the location of the secret settlement.

“Looking for the phantom damned, are you, sir?” She sounded amused.

He managed not to give a visible start. “So you have that legend, too? I heard it in Bettevy.”

“Oh, it ain’t no legend, m’lad. My nephew’s best friend’s cousin saw ’em with his own eyes when he was out hunting bear by the ghost mine, way deep in the Park. Men and women speaking your language. They don’t wear white, though, least not in the summer.” The housekeeper leaned in, scrutinizing him knowingly. “They wear green, and they live inside a high wall with guns and blinking electrical lights. Course, my nephew’s best friend’s cousin’s given to drink like most trappers, so I wouldn’t put much stock in the details, but you never know, do you?”

Blinking lights—that would mean cameras. The True Hearthers must surveille and arm their perimeter. But was it really safe for them to be in Resurgence? Tilrey hoped the trapper’s story hadn’t reached the Colonel’s black-clad troops, or that they’d written it off as a tall tale.

“Is this drunkard trapper here in town?” he asked casually, picking up a few books arranged on the bureau. They were Tangle favorites of his, as if Malsha had chosen them specifically for him.

“Might be. I heard he stepped in a trap, laid himself up for a few months. I could ask around.” The servant’s eyes glittered in a way Tilrey didn’t quite like; she knew an intrigue when she saw one. “But he’s a poor man, you know. Need to grease his palm to tempt him out of his way.”

It took Tilrey a few seconds to untangle the metaphor, but he was already reaching for his wallet of Harbourer currency. “My boss is a collector of Harbourer legends,” he said evenly. “He’s quite curious about this one, so I promised him I’d learn what I could.”

He placed several coins in the housekeeper’s wrinkled hand, hoping he had the denominations right. “Why don’t you give this to your trapper as a token of my esteem, and keep the rest yourself? Bear in mind, though, I’m leaving tomorrow.”

It was a risk, he knew, and a diversion from his mission, but he couldn’t resist. If Gavril succeeded in persuading Krisha to come back with them tomorrow, the sergeant would need Tilrey’s (and probably Gersha’s) help to keep Krisha from ending up in an Int/Sec cell. And if Gavril needed help badly enough, then he might just be persuaded to take a detour on the way home.

Telling Gavril about the True Hearth would be a drastic step. But Tilrey had a feeling that, if he prepared the ground carefully, the sergeant might be receptive. For all his patriotism, Gavril seemed to have a healthy natural sense of justice. More importantly, a Dissident settlement might be the only place left where he could safely live out his life with his lover.

Mrs. Desautels wore a look of studied indifference now, but the coins vanished into her apron. “I’ll see what I can do, sir. And I’ll be sure the master doesn’t hear about that dirty trapper coming round—he wouldn’t be pleased, you see. Likes to keep the yokels off his estate.”

She winked as she spoke, reassuring Tilrey she had no qualms about going behind Malsha’s back. Perhaps her master had alienated her with his fastidiousness or the cruelty he couldn’t always hide, and his loss was Tilrey’s gain.

He gave her his most innocent, disarming smile. “Tell your drunkard he’ll get twice that amount if he shows up here tonight without troubling your master. The same for you.”

***

When Gersha returned fully to himself, the sky was nearly dark, and he was in a cage, and the cage was in a tree.

At least, he thought so. The sky was striped with uneven black bars, and the floor beneath him swayed gently. Or could he be on a boat again? He heard an incessant creaking as of masts, a rustling as of sails.

No, not a boat. The rustling around him was leaves. The forest was everywhere, and, and—people. Somewhere below him, hundreds of voices were laughing, bellowing, and singing, too distant for him to make out words. Merry as they sounded, they made cold sweat bead on his temples.

When he managed to sit up, his hands found crude bars—saplings lashed with twine. _Cage, then._ The swaying intensified with his every movement. Through the cracks in the floor, he spied a galaxy of torches off to his right.

Maybe he was back on the spacious grounds of the Duke’s palace. This was some sort of new festivity, and the cage was a . . . game? Played by men with wolf teeth and sumac in their dyed-white hair?

Then, at last, everything came back at once: the blood gushing from Nestor’s throat, the horse’s scream, Foster lifeless on the ground, Overton begging for his life. They’d come here because of Gersha, because of that mad passion the Duke had chided him for. Now they were dead, all of them.

_I killed them._ And he’d been ready to die, too, so ready, but for some reason he was alive.

_My handheld._ He dug in his coat pockets and found nothing but that damned book, _The Marriage of Oslov and Harbour._ He reached into his shirt, suddenly frantic, and found Tilrey’s pendant secure around his neck. He pressed it to his lips and closed his eyes.

His attackers hadn’t knocked him out, he remembered. They hadn’t needed to. His legs had refused to run, his arms to strain against the ropes they bound him with. He remembered foggily, as if it had happened in a dream, being tossed over a man’s shoulder. He remembered jeering laughter and the rank smell of his captors, and after that everything hazed over as dread and humiliation shorted out his brain. He didn’t think he’d fainted, but he might as well have.

Now he could stretch out his arms and rise to his feet, but only just. Standing made the cage sway wildly. He sank back into a crouch, his stomach heaving, and began creeping around the edges, feeling for a door. The tightly lashed saplings jabbed his knees, while the bark hurt his hands. He’d seen a man’s throat cut, and here he was wincing over a few scrapes.

_My fault, all mine. No, I’m not really here. This can’t be real. I’m a Councillor of Oslov. I—_

A high-pitched squawk to his left froze him in place, his heart thudding against his ribs. Before he had time to wonder if night birds could raise such a din, a voice sing-songed mockingly, “Little bird in the cage! I’ve got a birdy, then!”

Gersha shrank away, sweat pouring down his cheeks, eyes straining through the gloom. _Where are you? What are you?_

Just beyond the bars, a torch sizzled to life, and he saw slices of a pale, skinny face framed with red hair. The nails-on-a-chalkboard voice said, “Can’t get out, don’t try! It’s locked with iron.”

It was a girl, perhaps no older than thirteen, perched in a fork of the same giant, gnarled pine that held Gersha’s prison. Her eyes glittered maliciously, or perhaps the flickering torch she held only made him think so.

_Just a child._ Gersha forced his breathing back under control, but he knew she could see the sweat—and, perhaps, tears—slicking his face. “What is this place?” he whispered, fighting to recall each Harbourer word.

Instead of answering, the girl poked something through the bars. “You munch that. Don’t try to grab me—got a knife, and I know how to use it.”

Her bare arm was muscular for its size, snaked with crude tattoos. Gersha plucked the food from her hand—some sort of dark jerky. He shuddered.

The girl’s eyes flashed, and the tip of a serrated knife breached the bars, pointed warningly at him. “Good meat we’re wasting on you. Eat it!”

Gersha forced a little into his mouth, remembering the guardsmen’s dark mutters about Rogues. “Thank you,” he managed, chewing but resolving not to swallow. “Is this, uh . . .”

“Venison, you fork-tongued foreigner! We don’t eat folks! That’s just what _they_ say.”

Trying to be reassured, though everything else he’d been told about Rogues seemed accurate, Gersha swallowed. He struggled to remember what he’d been taught in school about surviving a plane crash in the Wastes. _The Outers won’t see you as human. You must convince them you are._

But Outers didn’t massacre Oslovs as a rule. Most of them were smart enough to keep to themselves. How could he arouse empathy in people who acted more like wild animals?

He forced himself to meet the girl’s wide, dark eyes. “Thank you. I was hungry. My name is Gersha. What’s yours?”

She grinned tauntingly, but then her eyes darted away, as if there was fear on her side, too. “Names don’t count for shit. My dad killed your guards. Spilled their blood on the road. You missing your demon box?”

Gersha collapsed against the wall of the cage, feeling sick. _Blood. Demon box._ His handheld. Of course—they were going to ransom him. To whom, though?

Desperation pushed words into his mouth and made them flow, as if he were speaking on the Council floor. “Whatever your name is, what happened to my companions isn’t your fault. You don’t deserve to be hurt. But if your people don’t release me at once, if they try to play games with my people, you _will_ be hurt. Tell your father that. Our leader can send fire from the sky to kill you. She’ll burn this forest to the ground before you even know we’ve arrived.”

Fear distorted the girl’s features. She tugged a pendant of her own from her buckskin shirt—a wooden cross. “Godless damned! This is our forest, and we have the true faith. Demons can’t hurt us!”

Verdant hells, was everyone in Harbour obsessed with religion? Gersha raised his hands to emphasize his harmlessness. “Not demons. Heat-seeking missiles. But it won’t matter to you, because you’ll be dead.”

_And so will I if they actually do bomb the forest,_ but he wouldn’t think about that. He needed to focus on how Albertine Linnett would react if these psychopaths actually did manage to reach her with a ransom demand. Could he convince her he’d been abducted from Bettevy? Would the Duke play along?

And could he count on such a gigantic _if_?

“Is your father the leader here?” he asked hoarsely. “I need to see him. He needs to know the danger he’s putting himself in—”

“You ain’t worthy to speak to him!” The girl rose so quickly Gersha expected her to fall, even braced in anticipation of the rush of air as she tumbled to her death. But she simply grabbed a bough and adjusted her balance.

“My dad sits on the second branch on the right hand of the Preceptor,” she hissed, her eyes slits of rage. “If I tell him what you said, he’ll cut you in pieces and string you up, ransom or no ransom, you godless tree-eating wolf of the north!”

She was swinging her torch dangerously close to the bars. Gersha cringed back again. “I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. But if your father really thinks he can make this situation work for him, he’s—”

“Shut up!” She hurled the torch. Gersha dodged, his heart pounding, but she’d simply sent it to the ground below.

The girl laughed with a show of scorn. “Dangerous man y’are.” She made a gesture that was clearly intended as rude, tucked the cross back in her shirt, and moved in a blur. By the time Gersha registered that she was climbing down the tree like a squirrel, she’d disappeared from view .

For a while, he lay trembling on the floor of the cage, realizing he was thirsty, wondering if the little hellion would report his threats to her father. And if her father was the big man with the sumac berries in his hair and the knife— _green hells, no, don’t think about that._

He rolled over and curled up, willing the whole scene away. He shouldn’t be here. He’d been about to die on the road, and he’d closed his eyes to spend his last moment with Tilrey.

And here was Tilrey again, pressing a firm hand to Gersha’s shoulder blade and saying, _You’re having a strange dream, love. Did she really call you a “tree-eating wolf”? Odd._

Gersha did his best to hold tight to the fantasy. It quieted his breathing. “That is odd,” he whispered, closing his eyes on the forest and the distant torches. “‘Tree-eating’ could refer to the Muirthorn pines we tap for sap. But how would these people know about that?”

The phantom Tilrey faltered for an instant, threatening to dematerialize. Then he stroked Gersha’s filthy hair and said, _I wonder. We should do a scan of your Harbourer trope database for similar phrases. But she said “eat,” not “drink,” so maybe it’s a reference to the bark our Feudal ancestors supposedly boiled when they were starving._

They were still arguing about the most likely derivation of the insult when Gersha finally slipped off to sleep. And somewhere in the midst of the debate, between sleep and waking, he found himself saying almost casually, _I forgive you. You know that, right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I wrote this, I realized Gersha's arc here is heavily inspired by what happens to the technocrat Gundhalinu in Joan D. Vinge's _The Snow Queen_. I haven't read that book in ages, but clearly it left its mark on Oslov. I recommend it—and the sequel, _The Summer Queen_.


	13. The Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter features a flashback to a past non-con relationship, similar to what you saw in the early chapters of _A Serviceable Boy_.
> 
> It's also a long chapter, so we won't return to Gersha in the cage until the next one. He'll be fine overnight, if not exactly comfortable. ): Thanks so much for reading! <3

Tilrey meant to use the time before dinner to go over his conversational strategy, but the journey to Placid had wearied him more than he realized. He had only time to pull off his boots and stretch out on the puffy white counterpane in the guest room before he found his head growing hazy, full of dreamlike images.

No, not a dream but a memory, one of the collection he kept stowed in a dark attic in his brain.

***

Light snow fell, coating the fir branches. The sky above was nearly violet, the whole taiga glistening in the fading light. Tilrey shivered as icy crystals brushed his cheek, and Malsha said, “We walked a good eight kilos. Are you cold?”

Tilrey shook his head. “We can warm up with tea.”

“Good thought.”

They walked side by side down the forest path toward the vacation residence. Tilrey kept expecting Malsha to reach out and take his arm, but for some reason the Magistrate had refrained from touching him all day, even when they were sitting together on the flight from Redda. It was probably another of his games—anything to throw Tilrey off-kilter. The key was not to react.

When Malsha wanted to, he could be good company. Everything interested him: the whorls on tree bark, the hardy shrubs growing inside the ruined cabins, a cloud formation. He knew a great deal, and he shared his knowledge casually, without lecturing, and answered Tilrey’s questions. Sometimes, on days like this, Tilrey allowed himself to imagine how it would feel to have a different relationship with Malsha—to be his grandson, say.

It wouldn’t last, though. It was all part of the game.

Back inside, he brewed and poured the tea and sat down on the couch beside Malsha, waiting for the usual palmful of sap. The Magistrate was busy on his handheld, grousing in an undertone about his secretary and a sticky situation back at the office.

Tilrey fidgeted. He didn’t particularly _want_ Malsha to pay attention to him, but sitting here doing nothing was a fucking bore.

At last Malsha darkened the handheld, as if remembering he wasn’t in the Sector, and pulled out a vial. “Where are my manners?” He filled his palm and held it out to Tilrey. “Forgive me, love. I don’t mean to ignore you.”

Tilrey’s face burned. _Do I look like I feel neglected?_ To hide the reaction, or at least distract Malsha, he sank to his knees without being asked, crawled over, and seized the old man’s hand.

The sap was sweet on his tongue. He lapped it up almost aggressively, caressing Malsha’s palm and sucking on the fingers. That last remark had told him that, far from being ignored, he was being played with, just as he’d suspected. The game was about control, and the only way to regain a measure of it was to touch Malsha first.

“Well, _this_ would be hard to ignore,” the old man said with mild amusement, as Tilrey finished licking the sap and moved in between his legs, reaching for the bulge in his trousers. “Walking in the snow agrees with you, doesn’t it, love?”

Tilrey didn’t answer. He moved by rote: palming Malsha’s cock through the fabric, unfastening the trousers, bending his head, using his tongue around the tip, sheathing the whole organ in his mouth. He performed all the usual maneuvers in the order he’d been taught, waiting for the first helpless gasp of pleasure. When it came, he felt a warm surge of triumph, though thankfully no arousal.

Not that he’d ever been aroused by Malsha’s body. But the last time they were here, the old man had taught Tilrey, at length, that his own body would respond to certain kinds of stimulation whether he liked it or not. He was grateful the Fir didn’t seem to feel like playing that game tonight.

For the length of a blow job, at least, he could render the old man helpless and speechless. Malsha always waited till the very brink of his orgasm to knot his fingers in Tilrey’s hair and take charge; as he put it, _I wouldn’t want to interrupt your performance._

When it was over, Tilrey got to his feet and cleared up the tea things, glancing occasionally over at the Fir. The stupid bliss left Malsha’s face too quickly. He took off his glasses, polished them on his tunic, stretched, and put them back on. “Shall we bathe?”

In the tub, Malsha kept up his tactic, maintaining a chaste distance from Tilrey. He brought the damned handheld with him, and he looked up some unusual rock formations they’d seen and told Tilrey all about them. When they were done, he let Tilrey towel himself off, and didn’t even stay to watch the process before retiring to the bedroom.

At this point, there were usually instructions ( _Take the robe off. Stand there. No, lie down on your back. Let the robe fall just barely open._ ). Receiving none, Tilrey shrugged off the robe and sat on the bed. What was Malsha even doing over there—was he messaging his secretary again? _I won’t look at him to see if he’s looking at me. It’s all a fucking game._

Malsha sat down at last, gingerly, keeping the length of the bed between them. “Arthritis,” he explained. And then, looking straight at Tilrey: “Tell me, sweetheart, are you worried you’re losing your appeal?”

Blood rushed to Tilrey’s face fast enough to make his eyes water. “No, Fir,” he snapped.

“Oh, but of course.” A smile played at the edges of Malsha’s mouth. “I mustn’t forget, you despise me. You oblige me only because you must.”

Tilrey swallowed hard, and the tears receded. Gone were the nights when he’d wept in Malsha’s arms, resigned to his fate yet still mortified by it. Over the past two years, he’d achieved a fragile equilibrium; he could weather the game, if not win it. “What’s the point of this, Fir?” he asked, trying to keep his frustration off his face but probably not succeeding. “What do you _want_?”

Malsha surveyed him. The smile faded, giving way to a look Tilrey knew too well—pupils blown, eyes languid, cheeks flushed. _This is what gets him off. Seeing me like this, confused and pissed off and not in control. This is how he wins._

He wasn’t surprised when Malsha said, “Put your robe back on and go fetch Krisha.”

Tilrey knew better than to argue. So did Krisha, who was hunkered down in the garage with fish-skin nuggets and one of those sentimental Laborer drama streams.

The driver flicked off the cylinder and followed Tilrey without a word, seeming more dutiful than excited—but that was Krisha. Perhaps he saw this as just another duty, like recharging the mag-car’s battery. Tilrey wished he were as unflappable. Then, perhaps, _he_ would win.

Back in the bedroom, Malsha had moved into the armchair, a spectator’s position. He flicked two fingers at Tilrey ( _robe off_ ) and told Krisha, “On the bed.”

They both obeyed. Krisha asked dully, “How do you want me to have him, Fir?”

Malsha tsked. “How unromantic you are, Krisha. At least kiss him first.”

Tilrey stiffened, then forced himself to go limp and close his eyes as Krisha loomed over him. The first time the driver fucked him, it had been explicitly framed as his punishment for sleeping with Malsha’s granddaughter, Vera. He’d tried to squirm and reason his way out of it, which ultimately made it more unpleasant for him—and, of course, more pleasant for Malsha.

This was only the third time Malsha had pushed them together, but Tilrey had learned plenty since the first. If he resisted, or even moved, Krisha’s grip would become punishing, so he lay still as a frozen puddle and let his mouth open to the driver’s clumsily probing tongue. He thought about the glittering flakes, the violet sky. He imagined he was outside watching the snow thicken on the boughs.

Krisha could barely manage a facsimile of tenderness; even his lust felt robotic, as if his cock was on autopilot and his mind (assuming he had one) was somewhere else entirely. But he was strong, and he had stamina. By the time they were done, having demonstrated a couple of different positions at Malsha’s request, Tilrey was aching in several places he hadn’t known he could ache. He hadn’t shed a tear.

Lying facedown, breathing through the occasional shudder, he heard Krisha get up. Low voices—Malsha was handing Krisha a vial of sap and sending him back to his lair.

Then someone sat on the bed, and a hand cupped Tilrey’s ass, and he whimpered into the pillow—but very softly, while his well-trained body pressed up into the touch.

Gentle fingers stroked him, ghosting up his back and over his shoulders to tangle in his hair. “My arthritis really is giving me a hard time,” Malsha complained in his ear. “I think we’re done for tonight.”

_Thank you._ But Tilrey kept his face stony as the old man nudged him over onto his side. “That’s not why,” he said while Malsha sucked lazily at his earlobe. “It’s never why.”

“What’s that, darling?” Malsha broke off and propped himself up on an elbow. “Are you upset? I did ask him to be careful this time.”

_You know goddamn well I’m upset. You know I hate this. It’s why you do it._ He rolled over and hid his face again, the gesture itself a confession that Malsha was probably savoring. But Tilrey was past caring. And he found himself asking, “Why are you like this?”

“Mmmm?” A finger traced his shoulder blade.

“Why do you . . . need this?” His voice broke. “I do everything you want now, the way you want it. I don’t even know where you stop and I start sometimes. Why isn’t that enough?”

“ _Mmmm_.” Malsha’s voice took on a throaty note as he caressed Tilrey’s ass and thighs again, his careful fingers creating shivery trails of sensation. “You _have_ learned a lot from me, bright boy, but one of the things you’ve learned is how to deceive. How to pretend to enjoy it when you don’t.”

“That’s what men want,” Tilrey muttered. "For me to like it."

“ _Other_ men, yes, but I won’t have you trying that here, love. I need you to be real with me. That’s why I hurt you.”

“I hate you.” He spat the words into the pillow, realizing as he said them that they were exactly what Malsha wanted to hear.

“Verdant _hells_.” The Magistrate threw a knee over his kettle boy, his hard cock pressing urgently against Tilrey’s hip. “Arthritis be damned, let’s have a go. You are so very beautiful when you have no defenses left.”

***

When Tilrey came back downstairs, night had fallen. He’d taken a tepid bath, washed the mud out of his hair, scrubbed his face with cold water, and put on a fresh suit of clothes—Oslov ones, eggshell white, smelling of laundry and home. That had been Albertine’s idea.

Now that he’d seen how her father dressed, Tilrey knew her instincts had been good. Malsha was still far more Oslov than he wanted to admit, and if Tilrey was to have any hope of bringing this mission to a satisfactory conclusion—for Int/Sec _and_ the True Hearth—he needed to keep his mind in Oslov, too. But he needed to be Gersha’s clever, string-pulling secretary, not . . . what he had been.

Malsha reclined on one of the white divans, a cut-glass decanter and glasses on the table before him. “Will you have an aperitif, lad? This apple liqueur is nice, though I must say, living here has made me never want to see another apple in my life. All fall and winter it’s nothing but apple puddings and pies, fowl stuffed with apples, rotting apples underfoot.”

Tilrey sat down opposite him. _Every step confident and firm. No resentment or weakness._ “Living here was your choice, I believe.”

Malsha poured for both of them. “Please don’t be so relentlessly dour. I feel like I’m back in Oslov.”

Tilrey took the glass of golden liquid from him and held it to the light. “Just so you know, Fir, if you drug me, Sergeant Ardaly will abort the mission immediately. By force, if necessary.”

Malsha looked wounded. “If I really wanted to, I could drug you both. But believe me, I’m not an idiot. I know who has the power here.”

With a twinge of unease, Tilrey remembered the black-clad men massing in front of the former sports arena. Oslov might indeed have the power, but Oslov was far away, even if Gavril’s handheld did offer a line to the Embassy.

Gavril marched down the stairs, clad in his uniform, and plunked himself beside Tilrey. His movements were abrupt to the point of oafishness, as if Malsha’s house—or Krisha’s presence in it—had robbed him of his natural grace. “I heard my name,” he grunted.

Malsha smiled thinly. “Tilrey has threatened me with your wrath if I attempt to . . . interfere with him.”

“‘Interfere with’?”

“Incapacitate and rape.” Tilrey drank from his glass, staring straight into Malsha’s eyes. “Let’s just say I know it’s not a tactic he’d reject.”

Gavril’s hand, poised to take his own glass from Malsha, froze in midair.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Rishka.” The old man sighed, setting the glass back on the table. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve passed eighty. I didn’t summon you here for my erotic gratification.” He cocked his head at Gavril. “Not to mention, look at you both. Either one of you could incapacitate _me_ with all your limbs bound.”

Tilrey shot a glance at Gavril, doing his best to convey a warning: _He plays at weakness._ Then he raised the glass and took a longer swallow. “That does pose a question, though. Why _have_ you summoned me here? If you simply want to rat out your co-conspirators, why not give that information to your daughter directly?”

Malsha took a long drink of his own. His cheeks were beginning to flush and his posture to relax. “You have things backward, love. But then, you must realize I’ve never had any particular interest in ‘ratting out’ anyone. I’m as good as my word: Albertine will be satisfied with the information you bring her. As for my motive—do I need to tell you?”

Tilrey felt his cheeks flushing, just like old times; he was grateful for the forgiving candlelight. “If you mean you did all this to see me again, I’m flattered, Fir. But—”

“Oh, you aren’t flattered.” Malsha took another sip. “But you aren’t surprised, either. I meant it when I said I didn’t lure you here to try to fuck you one last time—please excuse the crude language,” he added in Gavril’s direction. “No, not for that, my love—do you mind if I call you that? Honestly, I don’t care if you mind. I’m dying. The wretched doctors here say I might have a year or two.” His eyes locked on Tilrey’s. “And I would never forgive myself if I died without knowing a bit more of your story. What you’ve become. What I’ve made of you. I’m in such suspense.”

Tilrey didn’t let himself break the stare, though he had a sensation of tiny insect legs crawling over his skin. “I’m not that interesting.”

“That I find hard to believe.” Malsha emphasized the words with his glass, sloshing the liqueur, then glanced up and away. “What is it, Krisha—are we ready?”

Krisha had appeared at the door, his expression as sullen as ever. “Jack doesn’t want the first course to get cold, Fir.”

Gavril’s jaw had tightened. Tilrey wondered if the sergeant’s reunion with Krisha had gone badly, but he had no bandwidth to focus on that now. He followed Krisha and Gavril into the dining room, with Malsha bringing up the rear.

A long oak table had been set with a white cloth, simple white dishes, and thick white candles whose flames brought to life a gleaming array of silverware and crystal. Mountainscapes loomed on the walls, their gloom contrasting with the brightness on the table.

Tilrey was unsurprised when Krisha ushered him to the seat opposite Malsha. A young Harbourer, black-haired with a cocky set to his generous mouth, was filling their glasses.

“Is this Jack, then?” Tilrey asked in Harbourer, giving the youth a once-over. Blue eyes contrasting with the hair—Malsha liked that. Say what he might about being at death’s door, the old man was always going to have a pretty boy around. “Is he of age?” he added in Oslov.

“Twenty-four and an excellent cook. You’ll see. Say hello to our guest, Jack.”

To Tilrey’s surprise, the Harbourer strolled confidently over and pumped his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said in painstakingly correct Oslov. “Malsha said you looked like a sunrise on a fair day in June, and he was right.”

Tilrey’s throat closed; he couldn’t form a reply. It took him until Jack had grinned and returned to the kitchen for him to understand his reaction. This was Malsha’s new kettle boy, more or less, and he was behaving with a jaunty informality that Tilrey would never have permitted himself in front of Malsha’s guests. And then . . . Malsha had talked to this boy, this stranger, about him.

“Not jealous?” Malsha teased.

Tilrey took a conservative sip of wine, remembering how dangerous the Duke’s cider had turned out to be. “He’s cheeky. I imagine you enjoy that. Now, I’d like to get down to business.”

“Of course you would. You’re so very businesslike, Rishka.” The old man’s eyes darted from Tilrey to the swing door, where Jack had emerged carrying a tureen. As the boy ladled soup into their bowls, he went on, “Not that I’m surprised, given your new job in the Sector. You must tell me about that.”

Tilrey picked up his spoon. Albertine had promised not to reveal details about his life to her father, but Malsha had probably made an easy guess, given how many former kettle boys became Councillors’ secretaries. “There’s not much to tell. I schedule appointments and take notes on committee meetings.”

“And you’ve somehow learned to speak English. When I knew you, you could only read it.” Malsha’s eyes were fixed on him again, viselike. “Did Gersha teach you? He was always quite the linguist.”

The spoon slipped from Tilrey’s suddenly trembling fingers and landed in the pale yellow purée, splashing it onto the tablecloth. He glared—not at Malsha this time, but at Gavril, who’d frozen. “What did I tell you about discretion, Sergeant?”

Gavril’s pale face gleamed with sweat in the candlelight. “I didn’t. I—” He turned his gaze to Krisha, reproachful now. “I just—well, we were talking, and I said you worked for Councillor Gádden.” The furrow in his brow said he’d never expected Krisha to pass on the information. “I didn’t think it was a secret.”

“And why should it be?” Malsha asked. He made that all-too-familiar _tsk_ sound. “As I said, Tilrey, I’m only curious about you. I don’t think a bit of honesty is too much to ask in exchange for what I’m offering. So, when Krisha told me that you work for Gersha, and that the two of you share sleeping quarters in the Duke’s palace, I was quite intrigued.”

_Intrigued._ Tilrey hadn’t forgotten how long ago, in the years before he and Gersha knew each other properly, Malsha had attempted to set up a threesome with the younger Upstart. _The two of you would be exquisite together_ , he’d told Tilrey. _But Gersha’s very shy._

The thought of Malsha coveting Gersha— _his_ beautiful, shy Gersha—turned Tilrey’s stomach. If he let the old sadist see that, though, he’d be lost.

“I don’t have secrets,” he lied, staring at the croutons drowned in his bowl. “Yes, Gersha and I sleep together. We _live_ together. When I was twenty-three, Verán gave me to him. We got along. What else do you want to know? Who’s on top?”

“You’ve grown so forceful, darling.” There was a smile in Malsha’s voice, and Tilrey couldn’t bring himself to look up. “I have a feeling your life has become absurdly interesting. Eat your soup, please—it’s too good to waste. Now, tell me, how on earth did Gersha become a Councillor? He never seemed to have any knack for politics.”

They went on like that through the soup, the salad, a puff pastry filled with meat paste, and the crispy pork drenched in fruity sauce (“Apples,” Malsha specified archly). Malsha asked questions, and Tilrey answered them, censoring anything that he considered private or dangerous for Colonel Thibault to know. Mostly they stuck to Sector gossip—who’d been elected to which office, who’d married whom, who’d had a falling out with a former ally.

At the old man’s urging, Tilrey offered an abridged account of Gersha’s political rise and his role in it. With each glass of wine, Malsha grew a little merrier and less focused.

“What a delicious irony,” he said, scooping up a dainty spoonful of the molded custard that Jack had just served them. “If a meek little programmer and a kettle boy could change the direction of the Council, that would be rich—as rich as your dessert, my dear,” he called after the boy. “Yes, indeed. But how on earth did you get the Lindblom girl’s cooperation? She’s no pushover.”

“Through her husband, Councillor Linbeck—Besha,” Tilrey said, watching Malsha closely. He’d been looking for an excuse to talk about Besha, wanting to see how the old man would react to news of his co-conspirator. “Besha was always fond of me,” he went on innocently, as if he knew nothing of the skeletons in the Councillor’s closet. “ _Too_ fond, really. It was a surprise to me, too, when I saw how much I was able to influence him.”

“A surprise?” Malsha’s expression had shifted from savoring to scolding. “I thought you were cleverer than that, lad. Besha doesn’t care about anything except his own pleasure and advancement. I knew him long before he was in the Council—I made that _possible_ , in fact. I gave him the post in the weapons depot where he met his lovely wife.” He took a swallow. “Anyway, I’ve never seen a hardier little cold-weather shrub than young Besha. All of Oslov could be destroyed by a nuclear blast, and he’d still be standing, trying to work an angle.”

“No doubt.” Tilrey had stopped at a glass and a half, and his head was cold and clear.

Malsha leaned across the table conspiratorially, his eyes glittering. “Tell me, what do you do for sweet little Besha? It must be something special for him to value you so much. I mean, he has you, obviously, but do you fuck him, too? I never actually had him, but I think his tastes might run that way.”

Tilrey dropped his eyes with mock modesty. “Discretion, Fir. But I can say that Davita and I have a nice understanding, too.”

Malsha set his glass down too hard, splashing red wine on the cloth, then struggled up out of his seat. “Oh, you’re the very devil, my lad. Seducing those fools left and right, bending them to your will. You’re everything I hoped you’d be.”

His eyes swung to Gavril, who’d been staring sullenly at his plate for most of the meal. “You, Sergeant—does Rishka give _you_ orders, too? Make you suck his cock, maybe? Don’t you find him rather forceful for someone who started as a little Skeinsha piece too scared to raise his eyes to me?”

Tilrey rolled his eyes, reminding Gavril not to react to anything Malsha said, but it was a losing battle. Gavril’s glower deepened as he said, “Only my superiors give me orders, but I respect Fir Bronn. And whose cock I suck or don’t isn’t your fucking business.”

“Oh, he’s fun. Such fire.” Malsha held out his hand to Tilrey. “Will you join me on the terrace for a digestif? This conversation has been entertaining, but certain communications require more privacy.” He waved apologetically at the seething Gavril and the expressionless Krisha. “Perhaps you two can continue catching up. Krisha’s bed’s quite big enough for two.”

For an instant, Gavril looked ready to say the hell with the mission and stab Malsha in the throat with his fork. His hands fisted as if he were about to push himself to his feet.

Tilrey gave him an authoritative glare— _don’t even think about_ it—and accepted the traitor’s arm, trying not to shudder. “I’ll be upstairs shortly, Sergeant. No need to check on me.”

He let Malsha lead him out onto a small raised terrace with a view of the lake and the blazing stars, keeping his body studiously relaxed while his thoughts roiled. _And now that I’ve “entertained” you, you bastard, you’re going to give me what I fucking came here for._

Someone—Jack, no doubt—had already set a small table with a white cloth, a decanter, and two glasses. Malsha poured, not spilling a drop, and handed one to Tilrey. Their fingers brushed in the process, but Malsha didn’t make the touch linger.

“It’s an herbal brew,” he said, the starlight glittering on his eyeglasses. “Mrs. Desautels says the recipe was passed down in her family. By the way, her friend the trapper won’t be coming by—at least not tonight.”

Tilrey choked, not just because the liqueur was bitter. “Excuse me?”

“The trapper. The man who claims to have seen Oslovs living in the Park.” Malsha’s gaze was dead steady, his tipsiness vanished as if it had never been. “You didn’t really think my servant would keep your conversation to herself, did you? Just because you bribed her? You know something about the kind of loyalty I expect—and require.”

Tilrey couldn’t find breath to answer, couldn’t get the foul stuff out of his throat. He leaned over the parapet and coughed until his eyes watered. Malsha thumped him lightly on the back, but again there was nothing suggestive in the touch, only solicitous.

_He’s playing with me. This whole time he’s been playing. This is how he gets off._

“I’ve heard the tales myself,” Malsha said, as if simply filling time until Tilrey was capable of speech again. “I never considered they might be true, frankly. What on earth would Oslovs be doing in the Park? Perhaps you have some ideas about that?”

_Fuck you._ Tilrey forced himself to turn and meet the old man’s eyes. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You’re long past due to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“We may need a new bargain.” Malsha’s voice was amused, but not in the uncontrolled way it had been during dinner. He was savoring Tilrey’s discomfort, feeding on it like a mosquito. “You won’t leave here tomorrow, my love.”

“No.” The word burst from him. “You can’t keep me here.”

Malsha cocked a brow and said calmly, “You’ll stay for a few more days, until we understand each other better. You’ll be honest with me. And in return, I won’t tell my daughter about your keen interest in reconnoitering with these mysterious Oslovs who have reason to hide themselves in the wilderness.”

“No.” It came more firmly this time, though Tilrey knew he was beaten. He could explain his curiosity about the legend to Albertine. But how would he spin his bribing of the housekeeper?

Again Malsha ignored the negative, as if it were too uncouth to acknowledge. “I’m not breaking the deal. As a reward for your honesty—your _total_ honesty—I shall give you some information that could make you the most powerful person in Oslov, if you’re as clever as I hope you are. Then we’ll part ways, and you’ll return to Bettevy as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That, I think, is a perfectly fair exchange.”


	14. Likable

Rain pattered on the leaves. Rain pattered on the cage and trickled through the bars, dampening Gersha’s hair and clothes.

He hurt from sleeping on knobby, uneven boughs. He hurt from not stretching his legs. He hurt from the vertiginous operation of getting across the swaying cage to use the bucket in the corner.

For an hour or so after waking, he’d considered breaking enough of the saplings to make a hole through which he could fall to his death, thereby saving himself from dishonor and Albertine Linnett from the disagreeable duty of rescuing him. There was honor in taking Soldrid in such circumstances, especially ones that were his own fault. But he couldn’t seem to work up the resolution he’d need for that, and besides, the saplings were green and strong.

Below him, the murmur of the Rogues’ settlement never ceased. Distant voices seemed to chat, gossip, and give orders, while others chanted as in prayer. The sounds came and went on the winds that swayed his cage and the treehouses he’d spotted among the boughs.

The Rogues seemed to live half on the ground, in dingy tents around cookfires, and half in midair. Some of the tree dwellings and the trunks that supported them had been painstakingly carved with cryptic, intricate patterns—crosses, doves, and symbols unlike the ones in the Duke’s library. The work must have taken decades.

Curiosity blunted the teeth of Gersha’s dread. Who were these people? Did the rest of the world even know they existed?

When the drizzle became a fine mist, he took out _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour _and forced himself to read a page at random:

_Imagine yourself starving in the Wastes. Will your test scores help you? Will your high name and lineage help you? Will your respect for authority help you? Will order help you? Will logic help you?_

_No. You’ll need to find the animal part of yourself that wants to live more than it wants life to make sense. If you want to live badly enough, chaos, dirt, and shit will become your best friends._

“Hey, demon! Thirsty? I got water.”

It was Gersha’s new best friend—or his tormentor. In the daylight, he could see how tattered the girl’s handwoven shift and short trousers were, and that one of her lower cuspids was missing. Her thick, naturally red hair was braided with wildflowers.

_She’s just a child. If she were an Oslov, she’d be in school._ This time he didn’t need to be threatened. He tucked his book away and reached for the water skin and jerky she held out.

The water was cool and delicious sliding down his dry throat. He tried not to think about micro-organisms as he handed back the empty skin. “You call me demon, yet you don’t seem afraid of me.”

“’Cause I’m not.” The girl grinned in her cocky way, but there was a wince to her smile, a fine crack in the bravado. “My dad sent a message to your people this morning. Better hope they care enough to get you back.”

“Sent a message? How?” He had an alarming vision of the wolf-men tapping on his handheld. But no, it was a “demon box” to them. Had they sent a messenger all the way across the lake to the Embassy? “What ransom are they asking?”

The girl shrugged in a way that suggested she knew less about her father’s plans than she wanted him to think. “Is it true your leader’s a she?”

“What?” The non sequitur made Gersha sink to his haunches again.

“Last night.” She seated herself on a bough and swung her bare legs. “You said _she_ would send fire from the sky to burn the forest. Didn’t you mean _he_?”

Gersha drew his knees to his chest, trying not to shiver. “No. The person effectively in charge of our operations in Harbour is a woman.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You let a woman give you orders? You do what she says?”

“Well, she wouldn’t be my superior at home. But in principle, yes. Man or woman, doesn’t matter.” He made his tone gently probing in the way he’d learned from Tilrey. “Do your people see things differently?”

The girl looked scornful and exhilarated at once. “Only a half-man lets a woman boss him. My dad’s got twelve wives, and only the First Wife even gets to speak to him without bowing first.” She demonstrated with a bob of her head.

_Good lord. How can you survive here?_ “In Oslov, we judge everyone by the same measure: their intelligence. That determines their social position.” _In theory, anyway._

The dark eyes widened on him, no longer mocking. “So in Oslov, a girl can tell her husband what to do?”

“She can certainly _tell_ him.” Gersha thought of Besha and Davita. “Whether he does it is another matter, but it’s that way on both sides. No one has to obey a spouse. Why are you thinking so much about marriage, anyway?” She was years, decades from that.

The girl dropped her eyes and played with her braid. “I’m getting hitched in three months. To the Preceptor’s brother.” Her words jammed themselves together. “It’s a big honor and blessed in the eyes of the Lord, and I’d only be Third Wife. But,” she added, her voice dropping to a confidential whisper, “he’s old.”

Gersha wasn’t sure whether to laugh in disbelief or cringe in horror. “How old?”

“Fifty or something.”

He stared, no longer tempted to laugh. _She’s a child._

“Anyways. It’s an honor. I just hope he don’t make me bow, or beat me like my uncle beats his wives. When folks hit me, I hit back. Ma says I’m proud, and pride goeth before a fall.”

Gersha drew in his breath, trying to contain his outrage. What would Tilrey do in this situation? He wouldn’t let his face glow with condescension for this poor little primitive, or lecture her about basic human rights _._ He would listen. He would find out what she wanted, what she needed. He would make her _like_ him—even if her brothers and father were bloodthirsty brutes who would slit his throat as soon as look at him.

Tilrey was so good at making people like him. Gersha swallowed around the lump in his throat. “You don’t seem proud to me. If you were in Oslov, you wouldn’t be getting married for quite a while, and then only to someone you liked.”

_Again, in theory_ , whispered Tilrey in his head. _It doesn’t always work out that way._

The girl snorted, as if choosing her own life partner were an absurd notion. “That’s too confusing. What if the person I liked didn’t like me back?”

“Then I guess you’d have to respect that person’s wishes and make new plans, er . . . what was your name again?”

“Peony. It’s a flower, Ma says, and she chose it because it’s pretty and she wanted me to be pretty, but I’m not. Not like a peony. Tell me more about the land of the damned. Do you have chores there? Do you get thrashed if you don’t do ’em?”

Gersha curled his fingers tight around the bars, willing himself not to recoil, but simply to answer her questions. “Well, that’s complicated. We do have chores, but nobody gets, uh, thrashed. Just locked in a cell or moral rehab. Uh, if there are repeat offenses.” He cleared his throat. “It all starts with the tests we take. The most important ones happen when we’re about your age . . .”

***

Tilrey was due to have brunch with Malsha at noon, but he needed to clear his head after a sleepless night. He slipped through the foyer and out onto the lawn, welcoming the light rain that moistened his clothes and trickled into his eyes.

Avoiding the garden terraces, he found a trail that wended through the woods to the lake. From an overlook, he watched the gunmetal-gray waves heave below, then took a new loop back.

Hedges blocked his view on either side. As the path doubled back, a low grunt or gasp made him stand still.

It came from the other side of the shrubbery. Tilrey inched forward until he had a view of a small clearing where Gavril lay on his back on a stone bench, Krisha on top of him.

They were both fully clothed. But the way they were going at it—Gavril’s fingers knotted in Krisha’s black hair, his knee hooked over Krisha’s thigh, Krisha’s tongue down Gavril’s throat—that shouldn’t last long.

Tilrey withdrew as quietly as he could. He retraced his original route, trying not to replay what he’d seen in his head; Gavril deserved to enjoy his reunion in private.

Still, as he climbed the slope of the lawn, he couldn’t stop seeing Krisha devouring Gavril’s mouth like a starving man. He’d been assuming the feelings were mainly on Gavril’s side, because Krisha seemed so incapable of tenderness in Tilrey’s own experience. He shuddered at the memory of those hands holding him down, hurting him in a bored, impersonal way.

Maybe Krisha just didn’t like _him_ , he thought, stepping back under the portico. But the man had seemed so passionate just now. Gavril was older, and Krisha had been a whore, and whores didn’t fall in love—or shouldn’t, anyway. It was unseemly to love your benefactor, the person who’d condescended to rescue you from a fate of serving the whole garrison.

As he stepped into the dining room, where a fire crackled briskly on the marble hearth, a thought rose in his head: _I looked like that with Gersha._ It embarrassed him to think how shamelessly eager he’d been with Gersha, especially now. But was eagerness necessarily a bad thing?

He schooled his face into impassivity as Malsha rose to meet him. “Ah, better late than never.”

Two places were set at the long table. Malsha ushered Tilrey into the seat with the view. “Sleep well?”

_You know damn well I didn’t._ “Fine. We’re going to have to explain our delay, you know.”

“You should have no trouble doing that, clever boy that you are.” Malsha propped his head on a fist, examining Tilrey sidelong, while Jack appeared and poured a liquid, too dark for tea, into their delicate cups. “And how is Sergeant Ardaly?” the old man continued. “Happy to see his young man again?”

Could Malsha have cameras set up on his estate? But he didn’t seem to have brought any Oslov tech with him, or else he lacked a power source; even his eyeglasses were of primitive make. Instead of answering, Tilrey picked up his cup and rolled the not-tea back and forth. “What is this crap, Fir?”

“You won’t say that once you taste it. That’s genuine coffee—the Colonel imports it from the southern continent.” Malsha took a sip. “Long, involved process, but worth it.”

The coffee was more acrid than tea, but the caffeine level must be higher. Tilrey could almost feel his synapses tingling, reinforcing his desire to get to the point. “I won’t let you hurt Gavril Ardaly. He’s a good man.”

“Did I express a desire to hurt him?” Malsha widened his eyes. “It’s you who would have put him in danger by leaving today. The Colonel’s troops are having their annual convocation here for the long weekend—you know what a _weekend_ is? Anyway, they won’t decamp till the day after tomorrow.”

“How convenient.” Tilrey took another sip; he needed the energy boost. Holding the old man’s gaze was still tricky; habit kept tugging at him, telling him to drop his eyes. _If he knows you’re not beaten, he’ll be harder on you_.

But playing dead wasn’t his strategy, not anymore. “You invited us here on the one weekend you knew Placid would be swarming with enemies,” he went on, watching oily patterns swirl on the coffee’s surface.

“You consider Resurgence an enemy, then?”

Malsha’s tone was too casual. He was setting some kind of trap, but Tilrey didn’t care. “Well, the Colonel wants our tech, which is the only thing keeping us safe from the rest of the planet. And she’s threatening our trading partner. Seems like an enemy to me.”

“Indeed.” The old man’s voice had gone dangerously soft. “But why should you worry about the safety of the Republic when you yourself are working to topple it?”

The air around them seemed to congeal, the raindrops outside to freeze in midair. Too late, Tilrey realized he was the one who’d frozen.

He picked up the cup, but his hand trembled, and he set it down. “You seem to be misinterpreting my interest in the legend. Fir Gádden asked me to res—”

“Oh, please.” Malsha sighed, reaching for a crescent of pastry from the serving plate between them. “We went over this last night. I asked for honesty, and it costs you nothing. You’re a shirker, aren’t you? Just say it.”

Tilrey stared at the white cloth. He must have sloshed the coffee; a stain was spreading. “I would never betray the Republic.”

“Tilrey.” The tone was dry now, matter-of-fact. “If you’ve been through everything I put you through, and everything the Island Party undoubtedly put you through, and you haven’t come out the other end wanting to slaughter every one of us—Upstarts, I mean—then you’re a coward. Or else you’re as self-serving as Besha.

The world was juddering around Tilrey now; he chose to blame the coffee. The words didn’t make sense coming from Malsha’s mouth, traitor or not. “You . . . ” was all he managed.

“Benefited from an absurdly unfair social arrangement? Yes. And I have no regrets.” Malsha paused as Jack emerged from the kitchen balancing four serving plates. When the boy had deposited soft-boiled eggs, toast, sausage and bacon, and a pile of flapjacks between them and withdrawn, the old man reached across the table and touched Tilrey lightly on the arm.

Tilrey didn’t hide his flinch this time. Malsha withdrew with a sigh. “Eat, Rishka. It’s going to get cold. And no, I won’t betray you to Albertine, who must trust you to have sent you here. Assuming,” he added after a moment, “that you cooperate, as we discussed last night.”

Tilrey took a bite of toast, but everything tasted like cardboard. His pulse surged with each new poisonous word, and it was an effort to form ones of his own: “I’m not going to oblige you, if that’s what you want.”

It was one of Malsha’s preferred euphemisms, and Tilrey flushed as he pronounced it, lowering his eyes. _I’d like you to oblige me tonight. Councillor Saldegren says he was very happy with the way you obliged him._ Such politeness, as if Tilrey were a diplomat granting concessions. As if he had a choice in the matter _._

Malsha looked perplexed. “You haven’t been listening, love. I told you yesterday I didn’t bring you here for _that_. My memories of our intimacies are intact, and cherished. I see no need to pollute them by attempting to repeat them. I’m at death’s door now, and you’re Gersha’s power behind the throne. We’ve moved on.”

“Meaning you prefer somebody younger.” The words were a snake that had been coiled inside Tilrey, waiting to strike, ever since Jack made his first appearance last night. He regretted them instantly. He wasn’t jealous. He was happy to have nothing to do with Malsha for the rest of his life. But there it was, anyway—a feeling of being displaced.

“Oh no, _Rishka_.” Malsha leaned his head on a fist again. His eyes went dreamy, the way they always did when he found the spot that really hurt. “Whether you’re eighteen or thirty or fifty, you will never not be exquisite. And still so sensitive.” He sighed, as if to prolong the moment. “I shall always have such a special place in my heart for you.”

“Fuck you.” It was the best he could come up with.

“Oh, I wish. I imagine you’re very good at being on top now. Something came between you and Gersha, though, didn’t it? Was it my poor, confused granddaughter again? Is she still in love with you?”

“She’s married to a suitable partner and about to give birth.” The words came in a hiss; Malsha was too close to the truth.

“How lovely for her. But I can tell you haven’t stayed away from her. Or her from you, more likely.” Malsha sighed. “I was the same at Vera’s age, all weak romantic notions. Coming to Harbour gave me a spine and a will to live, as it did my great-uncle Edvard before me. Anyhow, tell me, does Gersha know about your other allegiances? He’s not a Dissident himself, is he?”

Tilrey stared at the stained tablecloth. “I’ve made it clear I don’t want to talk about Gersha.”

“And I don’t want to send you to a cell in Int/Sec. He found out about your shirking, didn’t he?”

It was like before—no one in the world but the two of them. Tilrey willed his throat to stop closing. “You are a fucking sadist,” he said in a low voice. “You know, when I first went to live with Gersha, I treated him the way you taught me to treat all Upstarts. Like my jailor. I seduced him so he wouldn’t hurt me. It took me a long time to realize he doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body.”

“I’m right,” said Malsha with surprising gentleness. “Poor Gersha found out, and he was horrified. He didn’t turn you in—how could he?—but he rejected you.”

Tilrey made an ugly sound in his throat. “Why are you so good at this?”

“A lifetime of observation. And two years of observing you in particular.” The old man folded his hands under his chin. “Why do you say Gersha isn’t cruel when he’s clearly hurt you?”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me—not like you. He’s just being the Upstart he was born to be.” Admitting it hurt, but at least to Malsha, who didn’t give a fuck about Oslov, he _could_ admit it. “He has to take the high ground always, in every situation, and he _can_. Not like me.”

“If you’re a true believer in rebellion, shouldn’t you see _yourself_ as having the high ground, not Gersha?” Malsha sounded genuinely curious. “Most of the Dissenter types I’ve met were insufferably smug about their beliefs.”

Tilrey thought of Irin Dartán and Mirella Tunstadt, who sometimes did seem slightly too sure of the rightness of their cause, and then of his own doubts. “You know I can’t be like that. I’m—well, I’m what you made me. I seem to have a talent for hurting people.” _And it doesn’t help that I still hear your voice in my head, telling me how._ “When Gersha found out about me—well, it was my own fault. There was this little functionary after me, spying on me. I probably could have neutralized him, but instead, I decided to have some fun with him. The way you taught me.” He swallowed. “I humiliated him because I could, and he turned around and turned into a weapon that stabbed me in the heart.”

The old man was silent for so long that Tilrey found his eyes being drawn upward again. Malsha’s eyes met them—the same sky-blue as his, but blearier and wearier.

“You always had a flair for the dramatic,” the old man said. “But our time here is short, and accusing me of wrecking your life isn’t going to get you anywhere, because I have no aptitude for remorse. As I see it, the question is, where do you go from here? How do you get your beloved back?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I know we're in a dark place, but we're headed toward a reunion. :) So, can sociopaths give good advice? We may find out. Btw, one of my inspirations for Malsha's twisted psyche was the alt-Mulder in Sylvia's classic X-Files AU [Partners](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165422). The story is ice-cold and so hot; I highly recommend it.


	15. Mister Demon

Gersha woke as a nasal voice pierced the clammy twilight. “Here he is! It’s Mister Demon!”

Not Peony’s voice. Where was she? She’d left hours ago to do her chores, promising to return after dark with his dinner so he could tell her more stories about the damned. Several times she’d accused him of “making things up” as he answered her questions about Oslov, but he could tell she was fascinated.

Now another scrawny girl, about the same age, stood perched on Peony’s usual bough in the gloom. She was flanked by four smaller children—boys or girls, it was hard to tell—who wore fur loincloths and expressions of wolfish excitement. “Brought yer dinner!” she sang out.

Gersha made his way over to the bars, reminding himself they were just kids. “Where’s Peony?”

“Busy!” The girl thrust her hand through the bars, full of jerky and a juicy green leaf rolled up like a package. It reminded Gersha of the stuffed chard back home. “Go on, eat!” she commanded.

As his stomach grumbled over the course of the day, Gersha had decided the jerky, however disgusting, was the food of the gods. Some roughage would be nice, though. He took the offering, reminding himself to be likable. “I’d really appreciate some water, too, if you could.”

“‘Really appreciate’!” The new jailor roared with laughter at his formal Harbourer. The urchins giggled along.

The girl gave the cage a hard push, and Gersha nearly dropped the food as he scrabbled for purchase. “Eat, or I’ll make you swing till you puke!”

Gersha’s stomach was already lurching from the height and the motion, and the cage was creaking dangerously on its rope. Less enthusiastic about dying than he had been earlier today, he popped the leaf into his mouth and chewed.

So fibrous—was this even edible? He struggled to keep an expression of gratitude on his face—until something pricked the base of his tongue so hard he yelped, then began choking.

Nettles? A stinging insect? A live scorpion? Tasting blood, Gersha spat the morsel frantically back out, then spat again and again, trying to expel it all through the bars. Behind him, the children shrieked with laughter.

“What was that?” he gasped.

Something sang through the air and nicked Gersha on the left temple, the impact reverberating through his skull. He ducked and covered his head, but the motion set the cage swaying again, and the hail of small stones kept coming. A sharp one grazed his elbow. A child crowed, “Got ’im!”

_Just kids. I should stand and face them. I’m a coward._ Then a larger rock clipped him on the shoulder, yanking another yelp from his throat, and he turned and curled into a fetal position, shielding his softest parts from the onslaught. Even the worst bullies of his school days wouldn’t have mounted this kind of physical attack; they knew it could get them carted off to moral rehab.

A pebble stung Gersha’s thigh, and a strange thought occurred to him: Was this how Tilrey felt back in the days when Magistrate Linden beat him? Had he curled up like this, beyond pride or shame, knowing that fighting back could only lead to worse? Gersha understood it intellectually, but some part of him had always wondered how someone so strong could also endure so passively—until now.

“Hey, stop that, you little shit eaters! You’re not supposed to hurt him; he’s worth money. I’ll slice you up good!”

Peony was back—and angry. The other girl countered her, not sounding a bit intimidated. Cowering in his defensive posture, Gersha listened to the two of them shriek back and forth in a rapid-fire dialect he barely understood.

Eventually Peony’s harangue seemed to carry the day. He heard yelps and squeals from the smaller children, then scrambling and rustling as they fled back down the tree, or perhaps to adjacent ones. One of the kids wailed like a banshee, and Peony scolded, “Shut up, you stupid baby! Your ma would whip you for that noise. Yeah, that’s right, get out of here!”

When the tumult had retreated, Gersha dared to sit up. Peony was alone, staring fiercely at him, the torchlight picking out an oozing scrape on her cheek. “You okay, demon?”

“Fine.” He touched his face in the same place. “But you—”

“Ain’t nothing. It’s _my_ job to feed you.” She held out the water skin, and Gersha crept toward her. His tongue was barely bleeding, but it hurt, his mouth tasting of iron. He took the skin and drank it all in one go, his limbs throbbing where the rocks had found their target. It would be tough to sleep tonight.

“They hate me,” he muttered in Oslov. “Why does everybody hate me?”

Peony thrust a handful of jerky at him, her jaw set. “Don’t talk gibberish.”

“I’m not.” He chewed the food, trying to remember how to be likable. “It’s my language.”

Her voice softened a little. “They sent the messengers last night. Your people might come for you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He remembered his dire warnings yesterday about Oslov’s fire and fury; they seemed childish now. “That doesn’t make sense. It takes a day by horse to get back to Essex, and then you have to cross the lake, and then—”

“Stupid! Nobody’s going to Bettevy. Your people are right here in the woods.”

Gersha stared at her. His tongue was starting to feel enormous, and his temple throbbed. His mind was sluggish with fear, refusing to catch up. “You’re not talking about my people. You’re talking about the ‘phantom damned’.”

_Dissidents. They’ll take one look at me and know who I am and what kind of security clearance I have. And then the torture will start._

If Tilrey was already with the shirkers, surely he would intercede on Gersha’s behalf. But the last time Gersha was able to check, Tilrey’s tracker had been headed for Placid, which meant he hadn’t deserted the mission yet, or (Gersha realized with a sinking sensation) he’d never intended to except in Gersha’s imagination.

_I’m a fool. This is all my fault._

Peony was explaining obliviously: “We can get there in a half-day in good weather, and then they come fast ’cause they’ve got machines. Rrrrrr!” She imitated the roar of an ATV. “We trade with ’em sometimes, but mainly they trade with the Fersey clan. They got sky-fire, like you said, but they won’t hurt us. They just wanna be left alone, my dad says, behind their big fence. What’s the matter? Thought you’d be happy.”

Adrenaline sang in Gersha’s veins, blotting out everything else. It was almost a relief. He got up on his knees and leaned toward her, ignoring his martyred joints. “You have to talk to your dad, Peony. You have to call the messengers back. Those Oslovs in the woods aren’t my people. They’ll hurt me. My people are in Bettevy, at the Embassy—that’s where you need to go.”

Dismay tugged at the corners of her mouth. “We don’t cross the lake. We’re woodsfolk.”

“My real people will pay you more, don’t you see?” He was shouting now, scaring her, but he didn’t care.

Peony’s eyes turned to angry slits. “You said they’d burn down the forest, too.”

“That was just something I said! Look, if you give me to the Oslovs in the woods, they’ll take me apart piece by piece, and then they’ll kill me. That’s something you should understand—your people kill outsiders on principle, no questions asked. These Oslovs are the same—brutal!”

“We’re not brutal! We only kill city folk because they keep trying to kill us!” She kept her voice low, probably a survival habit, but her tone was murderous. “In the old days, we had farms and cows like real people. The Colonel sent soldiers to burn us out, to take our land, and that’s why we live in the forest now. Everybody else is the killers, not us!”

“Okay. Okay, I didn’t know that.” Gersha inched away from her rage. Her story was more familiar than he liked to admit; it was pretty much how Oslovs had treated Outers in the Wastes, appropriating their land and driving them into desolation. “I’m sorry. I know so little about your people. But what I’m telling you about the Oslovs in these woods is true. They’re my enemies.”

The torch threw Peony’s features into relief, giving her chin and forehead monstrous proportions, but he couldn’t see her actual expression. “Why would demons fight demons?” she muttered.

“It’s hard to explain.” He was too exhausted to resent the “demon” label. She wouldn’t ask her dad to call the messengers back; he could tell by the way she was hanging her head. She’d been taught to defer to men and elders, and her people were as shy of civilization as they were merciless to its representatives—perhaps with a degree of reason.

“Peony.” He inched closer and crouched with his face against the bars. “You know things, don’t you? You sneak around; you see things. Do you know where my ‘demon box’ is?”

Peony’s eyes were flat bronze in the torchlight. “I ain’t getting it for you. They’d kill me.”

“But you _could_ get it, couldn’t you?” Tears blurred Gersha’s vision; he didn’t blink them away. He could only imagine how haggard he looked, how desperate, but right now he needed to use that to his advantage. The youths who’d brought him here were seasoned killers. Peony was no such thing—he could see her chin trembling.

He hoped he wasn’t putting her in mortal danger, but there was only so much he could afford to care about that now. “If the Oslovs of this forest take me, I will die, Peony. I will die, and in great pain. I will never get home.”

***

Tilrey came to the dinner table bracing himself for another encounter with Malsha. Instead, he found himself alone except for Jack.

“The rain is making the Fir’s rheumatism act up, so he asked me to make his apologies,” the boy said in Oslov, placing a plate of bread, butter, and chopped raw vegetables in front of Tilrey. “You just ask me for anything you want, and he’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow.”

“What about Sergeant Ardaly?” Tilrey took a bite of crusty bread; with the fresh butter, it was delicious.

Jack shrugged. “Off somewhere with Krisha, Fir.”

Playing sick was probably another of Malsha’s tactics, giving himself time to consider his next move. Tilrey didn’t much care. He’d rejected Malsha’s offer of relationship advice as the mockery it was, and now, instead of trying to anticipate the old man’s next attack, he savored the food, the solitude, and the warmth of the crackling fire on the hearth.

Jack continued to wait on him, bringing cold meat, boiled potatoes, greens, and finally a piece of apple tart and a steaming mint tea. “Good for the digestion,” he explained.

One bite of the apple tart convinced Tilrey that Malsha was wrong about apples, as about many things; you couldn’t have too many. When Jack returned to clear up, he said, “I didn’t know food could taste this good. They make elaborate desserts at the Duke’s, but yours is better.”

“Thanks, Fir. It’s the cinnamon—costs a king’s ransom. Worse than coffee even.” The young man hovered beside the table, stance wide and arms crossed, polite but not particularly submissive. “My dad’s dead and my ma couldn’t afford to apprentice me, so I came here and learned to cook from Mrs. Desautels. Without the Fir’s generosity, I might’ve been begging.”

He spoke as if he were reciting a lesson, probably because he was. Tilrey wondered if he was expected to be impressed by the old man’s “charity” to this young, attractive pauper. Surely Malsha thought better of him than that. “Does he treat you all right?” he asked curtly in Harbourer.

Jack’s blue eyes narrowed, but his face was otherwise unreadable. “Had worse masters. I get a weekly stipend, and the Fir’s written me into his will. Krisha gets the house, and I get most of the land around it.” His white teeth flashed in a grin, flirtatious yet impersonal. “That should fetch a pretty price. He give _you_ anything before he left Oslov?”

Tilrey shook his head. _Only a stint in an Int/Sec cell._ “Property doesn’t work that way for us.”

“Too bad.” The boy levered his rump against the table and canted his upper body toward Tilrey, his gaze turning languid. “The Fir talks about you all the time, you know. Krisha hates it.” He winked. “He won’t admit it, but I think he’s jealous. Is it true you’ve got a really big cock?”

“Excuse me?” Tilrey pushed out his chair; he’d had about enough intrusive questions in this house.

Before he could rise to go, though, Jack sank to his knees before him. “I’m so sorry for my rudeness, Fir,” he said, returning to Oslov, his eyes gleaming with apparent contrition. “I’d love to make it up to you.” The smile on his shapely lips left no room for interpretation.

Tilrey went cold. “Malsha told you to do this.”

Jack knelt up and stroked Tilrey’s knee, still smiling in that lazy, seductive way. “Well, he said after dessert, I should give you _dessert_.” He shrugged, as if acknowledging the shabbiness of the innuendo. “Believe me, I can make it good.”

Tilrey pushed the wandering hand away, gentle but firm. “Tell your Fir no thanks.”

“Oh, but I _want_ to.” The boy’s eyes fixed on Tilrey’s; under the mask of eagerness, he looked bored. “You wouldn’t believe how deep I can take you—right down into my throat. It’ll be like nothing you ever experienced.”

“Oh, I can believe it—I know the drill.” Tilrey swallowed a bitter taste, remembering how he’d tried to force his mouth on Gersha his last night at the Duke’s palace. He’d been on his knees practically begging, too—but that had been different. “Can’t you just tell Malsha you did it?” he asked, beginning to feel for the boy. “I wager it won’t be your first lie to him.”

Jack sat back on his haunches, the sensual look melting off his face. “I was going to. But he said he’d know if I lied, and I think he meant it. Do you have a deformity, something I’d only know about if I actually sucked your cock?”

Tilrey laughed; it hurt. He knew Malsha so much better than he wanted to. “No, no deformity. He’ll ask you whether I came, and how. Whether I asked you to give me a signal.”

Understanding dawned on Jack’s face. “Shit. What kind of signal?”

Tilrey didn’t like the way the corners of the boy’s mouth were tugging down—pity. “What happens if you don’t answer the question right?”

The boy dropped his eyes. “If you won’t help me, I’d just as soon tell him the truth. Less risky.”

If this was an elaborate trap, Tilrey felt inclined to toss a grenade at it. “Fine. Here’s the truth: I see through Malsha’s pathetic gambit, and the answer is no, I don’t need an explicit command to come. Go and tell your master that—and tell him I don’t intend to give him a second-hand demonstration, and furthermore, if he punishes you for not coercing me into that demonstration, I shall leave here immediately, his threats be damned.”

“Okay, but—”

“Just tell him that.” And Tilrey rose and marched out of the dining room, not sparing another glance for the young man crouched on the floor.

Righteous indignation propelled him up the stairs, his temples pounding. Had Malsha actually thought he’d accept the poisoned gift of a blow job, or was this yet another tactic to throw him off-balance?

In the hallway at the top, he headed for Gavril’s room, meaning to remind the sergeant to use his handheld to inform Albertine of their delay. He was going over the best wording in his head when a noise from behind the door stopped him in his tracks—a smothered groan.

Were the two of them still at it? Tilrey was about to repair to his own room when he heard a crash, as of a body hitting a wall. He tiptoed back to the door and pressed his ear to it. A gasp and another crash were followed by low, breathy sobbing—Gavril’s, he thought.

It didn’t sound like sex anymore, or at least not like good sex. Tilrey knocked. The sobbing cut off abruptly. He called, “Everything okay in there?”

“Fine.” It was Gavril’s voice, leaden.

“Well, it doesn’t sound fine. I need to talk to you, Sergeant. Int/Sec business.”

After what felt like ten minutes, Gavril opened up. He was alone and dressed, but his shirt was askew, his feet bare, his eyes red-rimmed. A quick survey of the room revealed two fist-sized cavities in the lathe-and-plaster wall, one of them smeared red.

Gavril was cradling the bleeding knuckles of his right hand against his shirt. He met Tilrey’s eyes defiantly. “The psycho bastard can afford to get his wall fixed.”

“I know. Trash all his possessions for all I care.” Tilrey indicated the wounded hand. “You should get ointment on those cuts, though. Got a kit?”

“Do it myself.” But instead of doing so, Gavril sank onto the unmade bed with a deep sigh. “In the valise.”

Tilrey found the first-aid kit, pushed a chair beside the bed, and sat down. Gavril collapsed into the pillows and closed his eyes, offering his hand with a look of tragic resignation. “What’s the Int/Sec business?”

“I just said that to get you to open the door.” Tilrey got up to wet some gauze strips in the basin on the windowsill. “In case he was here and you needed help.”

“He?” Gavril tried to look confused, but he was the world’s worst bluffer.

Tilrey returned to his seat and began swabbing dried blood from Gavril’s knuckles as carefully as he could. “Look, I know this isn’t my business. But Krisha didn’t . . . do anything to you, did he? Turn on you?” Based on past experience, he still didn’t trust the Outer.

Gavril made a strangled sound, half-laugh and half-sob. “What, you think he played rough with me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Gavril rubbed his eyes with the back of his free hand. “He said no.”

“No to . . .” Certainly not to renewing their relations, judging by what Tilrey had seen this morning.

“He won’t come with me. Says he’s staying here.” Gavril spat out the words. “He says he’s got a good life here, and—and—”

“And Malsha’s willed this house to him.” Tilrey steadied the soldier’s trembling hand with a brief clasp, then reached for the ointment. “Look, I understand how you feel, but you can’t exactly blame Krisha. If he goes back to Oslov, he’ll probably end up in a cell. At the very least, they’ll strip him of his citizenship and exile him again.”

Gavril heaved a deep breath, scrubbing his free hand through his short sand-colored curls. “Know that. I didn’t ask him—”

“What didn’t you ask him?” Tilrey spread antibacterial salve over the cuts and scrapes. Gavril’s hand was already a fretwork of calluses and scars, a hand that had labored hard and probably even killed for the Republic. “Or rather, what did you ask him?”

The sergeant shook his head. “Nothing. It’s not your business.”

“Whatever you say here stays between us. As you may have intuited from my conversation with the old traitor, I understand about having secrets.”

Gavril’s face contorted as if he were pushing a rock uphill. “I’m not a fucking traitor like Linnett. I’d never hurt Oslov.”

“But you know Krisha wouldn’t be safe there.”

“I spent most of my service in the Wastes. I know a spot where we could settle and hunt for our livelihood and nobody’d bother us, not Oslovs nor Outers. That’s where I asked Krisha to go.” Gavril looked directly at Tilrey, his eyes clear violet-blue, as if defying him to call the plan what it was: desertion and self-exile. The sergeant might not see himself as a traitor, but his superiors would.

Tilrey pulled a roll of gauze from the kit, deliberately showing no surprise. _He’s practically a shirker. He just doesn’t know it yet._ “So you asked Krisha to go live with you in the Wastes. And you’re surprised he said no?”

The blue eyes looked hurt. “We’d be together. We’d get along—we both know how to survive out there. But he wouldn’t even listen to me. He just tried to start again with the . . . you know.” Gavril blushed deeply, giving Tilrey a hint of just how persuasive Krisha could be when he chose. “I thought, after last night and this morning—well, I mean, he seemed to _want_ to be with me. I could barely walk by noon.” A sad smile. “What the fuck do you think is wrong with him?”

Tilrey taped the gauze around the sergeant’s knuckles, beginning to feel a little impatient. “Nothing’s wrong with Krisha. He likes you, but not enough to run off to some cave on the tundra—not after he’s lived like this. He had a shitty start in life, Gavril. He just wants to be comfortable.”

“But with _that_ man?” Gavril yanked his bandaged hand from Tilrey’s grip, his eyes flashing now. “You know that bastard better than anybody. How can I leave Krisha with him?”

Half an hour ago, Tilrey had been ready to gut Malsha himself. Now that he’d calmed down, though, he found himself able to imagine Krisha’s perspective. “He’s used to it. Malsha probably isn’t that hard on him anyway. Look, Gavril, if you love Krisha, if you want to be with him, then figure out what he actually wants. Listen to what he’s saying. Don’t go off on some half-assed crusade to save somebody who doesn’t need saving.”

Was that what Gersha had done? Maybe at first, but they’d worked out a balance, and if there’d still been lies between them—well, whose fault was that? He wasn’t sure anymore.

Gavril swung his legs over the side of the bed and buried his face in his hands. “Will you talk to him for me?”

Tilrey nearly barked with laughter. “You think Krisha’s going to listen to _me_?”

Then he realized Gavril’s shoulders were hitching again, the sobs soundless, and he slung an arm around the sergeant’s waist. “You’re talking about desertion, Gavril. Is Krisha really worth that to you?”

Gavril said in a broken voice, “I can’t talk to him anymore. Every time I try, he just . . . he distracts me.”

Tilrey sighed; he knew all too well how to use sex as a distraction. Krisha might be able to pull that trick on Gavril, but it wouldn’t work on him, and given some of their common experiences, he might be able to gauge Krisha’s true feelings better than the sergeant could. The only problem was, he didn’t particularly want to deal with Krisha.

But Gavril had made it plain he was willing to give up his rank, his pride, his own citizenship—all for one ornery, inarticulate former garrison whore. How could you say no to a request from someone who was putting everything on the line?

As the sergeant’s body relaxed into his, the head falling on his shoulder, Tilrey said, “I’ll give it a try. But I can’t promise anything.”


	16. Last Chances

Gersha woke in the dark, shivering all over. He wrapped himself tightly in his coat and tried to focus on the positives: His tongue had stopped swelling. He wasn’t dizzy or nauseated, so he probably didn’t have a concussion.

He was just going to be executed by shirkers, was all, probably after a lengthy interrogation. Or would they cut short the torture because Tilrey had already told them everything useful he knew? Was there anything sensitive Gersha _hadn’t_ shared with Tilrey? He dozed off again mulling over this questionable consolation as the birds began warbling manically in the trees.

He woke to the sound of Peony’s thin voice calling him. Sitting up to face her, he recoiled at the sight of a shiny new bruise over her right eye. “What happened? The girl from last night—did she hurt you?”

Peony shook her head. “Crossed my dad.” An incongruous grin twisted her lips, as if she had a delicious secret. “I had to do it so he’d put me down in the root cellar for the night. He doesn’t know I know where he keeps his most precious stuff.”

A small, pale hand poked from her deer-skin poncho, holding a sliver of metal. Gersha’s breath caught. He wanted to yell, _Give it to me!_ , but he managed to keep his own hands by his sides. “Oh, Peony. You shouldn’t have—”

He caught himself again. She didn’t need a reminder of how little reason she had to help him. “Thank you. That was incredibly brave of you, though I wish you hadn’t gotten hurt. It wasn’t too uncomfortable in the root cellar, was it?”

“Nah, I ain’t soft like you.” Peony’s grin was wide and crooked now. “I ain’t even given it to you yet.” She tilted Gersha’s handheld to fit it through the bars, then stopped, her grin fading. “You gotta promise me you won’t use this to hurt us. No demon magic. No fire from the sky.”

“I promise.” Gersha extended his hand, pleading with his eyes, hoping he could keep the promise. He wasn’t sure he’d mind seeing her father and brothers burn, but he couldn’t let any harm come to her or the other innocents here.

“You gonna use it right away?” she asked, still holding the device out of reach. “Can I watch?”

“I can show you the screen for a second, but I have to conserve the battery until our satellite is close enough to give me a signal. That should be around midnight.” He hoped to everything green that the shirkers took their time getting here. Once she grasped the situation, Albertine would make keeping him out of their hands her top priority—if not for his own sake, then for the Republic’s.

Peony nodded, no longer smiling. “Then they’ll come and get you?”

Something clenched in Gersha’s chest. The Duke had had a political reason to help him, at least, but she was doing it for his own sake, at considerable risk to herself. “Peony, you don’t know how grateful I am. Truly. Anything I can do for you after I get out of here, I will. Just say the word.”

He half expected her to say, _Take me with you to Oslov._ But she only passed him the handheld, a surprisingly mature, resigned look in her eyes. “I just don’t want you to die, that’s all.”

***

_“Get up! Now!”_

_Tilrey snapped awake. At first, he had no idea where he was—somewhere dark and cold. Then it all came back. While Malsha was off politicking with other Councillors and Krisha was fixing something in the garage, he’d snuck out of the vacation residence and up the trail into the woods. Inside one of the ruined huts, he’d lain down and hugged himself in the snow, his eyelids fluttering shut as he enjoyed simply being free._

_He must have dozed off. Now night had fallen, and here was Krisha, yanking him up by his coat and snarling, “What the fuck were you thinking? If anything happens to you, the Fir’ll skin me alive.”_

Good _. But Tilrey allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, saying only, “I’m fine. It’s barely cold out here.” He tried not to shiver too obviously._

_Krisha raised a hand as if to strike him, then let it fall. The driver was trembling a little himself, his face tense under his headlamp. “You stupid fuck,” he muttered as he manhandled Tilrey out of the hut. “Lucky he likes you so much.”_

_“Not that lucky.” Knowing from experience that Krisha was stronger than he was, Tilrey let the driver trawl him back down the path. “I wasn’t going anywhere. Just wanted a little air.”_

_The gloved fingers tightened on his arm. “Don’t care about nobody but yourself, do you? Know what the Fir would do if he came back and found you gone?”_

_Tilrey was squinting with pain from the grip, but he managed not to stumble. “I’m sure you’d survive.”_

_“_ You _wouldn’t, not out here. You’ve always had it easy. You got no idea.”_

_“Yeah, I’ve had it real easy.” He wasn’t sure Krisha understood sarcasm, so he kept quiet the rest of the way back to the residence. The driver’s punishing grip loosened, though he didn’t release Tilrey until they were safely inside the coldroom. Then he gave him a shove and said, “Get out of your gear. He’ll be back any minute. You ever do that again, I hurt you in ways you can’t imagine.”_

If you can catch me _. Tilrey sank onto the bench and started unlacing his boots. “Thanks,” he said, remembering how Krisha had been trembling back there. “That was pretty stupid of me.”_

_He didn’t add what they both knew: The only way Tilrey could truly escape Malsha Linnett was to give himself to the cold, and he’d barely even tried. Krisha could be calling him a coward for his half-assed jailbreak, but he wasn’t._

_And for that reason alone, Tilrey said, “Thanks” one more time, though he knew Krisha would pretend he hadn’t heard._

That was probably the least unpleasant memory Tilrey had of Krisha. He kept it grimly in mind as he went in search of the man on a crisp, bright morning, determined to fulfill the promise he’d made to Gavril last night.

Malsha hadn’t appeared at breakfast, supposedly still holed up nursing his rheumatism. Gavril had gone out to sulk in the fresh air, so Tilrey had the long table to himself and enjoyed a friendly morning chat with Jack, who informed him Krisha was in the stable.

The sun blazed outside, but the stable was dark, the air thick with dust and fine hay particles. Tilrey let his eyes adjust until he made out the driver about halfway down the stalls. Krisha was busy combing the coat of a chestnut horse, humming to himself in an almost relaxed way.

When he saw Tilrey, his features stiffened into the usual mask. “The Fir wants to see you at dinner tonight.”

“Tell him I’ll be there. Don’t let me interrupt your work.”

Krisha stood still for a moment, glowering. Then he picked up a new brush, knelt, and took hold of the horse’s left foreleg. “What’s the deal? What do you want?”

“Just to watch for a second.”

Krisha grunted, but he began grooming the leg as if mindful of sensitive joints. The horse didn’t flinch.

It was strange seeing Krisha’s hands being so gentle when they’d always been rough with him. “You like these creatures,” Tilrey observed. “As much as you liked mag-cars and airplanes? No, better, I think. Definitely better than you like people.”

“Fuck off. Didn’t ask for an audience.”

“Relax, I was just—”

Krisha didn’t let him finish. “You’re like _him_ now, always watching folks and making ’em twitchy, makin’ ’em sweat. You talk like him, too.”

Tilrey didn’t need to ask who _him_ was. He gave Krisha due credit for being able to launch a decent barb in his deadpan way. “I came for a reason. The sergeant asked me to talk to you.”

Another derisive grunt. “He can talk to me himself. Has already, plenty.”

“He seems to think you aren’t listening.”

“Fuck him.” Krisha gave the horse’s leg a pat, the careful movement not matching his tone, and rose to his feet. He took a step toward Tilrey, clearly trying to loom over him, though they were about the same height. “Tell Gavril I’ve said all I’m gonna say. I’m not going back to Redda, or to freeze my ass off in the Wastes. Got a life here.”

Tilrey crossed his arms. “I can see that. But I don’t think you’re telling Gavril what he actually wants to know. To put it bluntly, do you give a fuck about him, or are you just fucking him?”

Krisha glared—not directly at Tilrey, but a few inches over his shoulder. His hands had fisted. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Would you want to live with him anywhere? Or are you just grateful to him for helping you to be something besides a garrison whore?”

Krisha’s fists flexed, his whole body tensing. “Fuck you, and fuck him for telling you my business. Ancient history.”

“I know. I’m sorry for bringing it up.” Tilrey spread his hands disarmingly, but didn’t retreat. Krisha was beginning to remind him of a horse he’d seen rear up and whinny on a Bettevy street, nearly throwing its rider; a groom had calmed it by walking it back and forth and speaking softly in its ear. “Look,” he said, “if you just tell me the truth, I’ll find a way to break the news to Gavril. I’m better with words than you are. If you don’t want to be with him, I’ll make him accept that, and—”

“Stay out of my business!” Krisha advanced on him, snarling the words, and Tilrey did retreat now. “You’re talking like you think I’m stupid.”

“I don’t, I—”

“What are you, a fucking Strutter now? Just because you’ve got some sap of a Councillor wrapped around your finger? You’re no better than me!”

Tilrey stopped as his back hit the stable wall. He kept his voice level. “If you want to call me names, go ahead and get it out of your system. I won’t take offense.”

“Really? ’Cause you always did before.” The driver mimicked a youth’s high voice: “‘I’m too good to be a dirty whore. My mom’s an important person in Thurskein. I took all my tests. I’m _special_.’” He gave Tilrey a hard poke in the abdomen, nothing erotic about it. “You still work out. Gotta look good for your Fir, huh?”

Tilrey took the time to exhale, steadying his voice. “I’m not here to lord it over you, Krisha. I’m here for Gavril. He cares about you.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know how Krisha would respond to the word _love_. Any sentimentality had probably been beaten out of him decades ago. “He wants to spend his life with you. And if you asked, I bet he’d agree to spend it here, in the house you’re going to inherit.”

The scorn bled abruptly out of Krisha’s face, leaving a disturbing blankness. “Fir Ardaly’s an officer of the Republic,” he said, as if Tilrey had suggested burning the house down. “He’d never betray Oslov.”

“Didn’t he already tell you he’d run away with you to the Wastes?”

Krisha looked like a small boy who’d been ordered to solve a differential equation. “That’s just something men say.”

“When they want to fuck you, they’ll promise anything, right?” Tilrey drew himself up and inched away from the wall, toward the doorway. “Would it kill you to consider that this man might be different?”

Krisha’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe _you’re_ the sap. You think your Councillor ‘cares about’ you? It don’t work that way, not with lads like us. Gavril’s a good soldier, he’s got principles. He would never, ever—” He broke off, staring down at his feet.

“You think you’re not good enough for the sergeant, then? Because he disagrees.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

Tilrey was beginning to think he’d done all he could with this conversation. “Look, I get it. You don’t have feelings. You aren’t allowed them, don’t need them, whatever. I’ve been there; I understand. But Gavril doesn’t, okay, Krisha? He has feelings for you, rightly or wrongly, and he wants you to have feelings back. So shall I go tell him you aren’t capable? When you spent all of yesterday fucking him like your life depended on it, was that just your way of saying thank you? Or . . .”

He caught Krisha’s eyes, hard. The driver flinched.

“Fine, then. I’ll give Gavril your answer.” Tilrey turned toward the sunlit doorway. “Tell your precious Fir I’ll be at dinner for him to torture.”

He was a step outside when Krisha called, “You won’t say a fucking word to Gavril. Or I’ll hurt you!”

“So we’re back where we started? With playground threats?” Tilrey wheeled to face him again. “Will you start talking to Gavril yourself, then? Telling him what you want? Or are you going to make him read your mind?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Stay here with me.” Krisha was contemplating the dusty floor again. The words were almost inaudible.

“Why not ask anyway? You might be surprised.” Tilrey turned to walk back toward the house. Halfway there, he felt a surprising lightness in his chest, even though he wasn’t sure he’d made things better and not worse.

***

Midnight, and still no signal. Maybe it was the weather. After a beautiful sunset, thunder had rumbled in the distance, and now cold rain was spitting through the bars of Gersha’s cage. Shielding the handheld with his body, he refreshed the display again.

Finally! The faintest of signals pulsed on the screen. His heart battering his ribs, Gersha punched in Albertine’s personal code and hit send.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, uttering a silent prayer to any god who happened to be available, and opened them. _Delivery failed._

_Shit_. Sweat was blinding him; he swiped his face with a filthy hand. Was the problem the vector between here and Bettevy? What if he tried a direct line to Oslov? With trembling fingers, he brought up the official mission directory, doing his best to ignore the low-battery alert blinking in the corner of the screen.

The cage lurched.

By now, Gersha was accustomed to the way his prison swayed with wind currents, not to mention with every move he made. This was different—he’d dropped at least a half-meter straight _down_. A second lurch kicked the bottom out of his stomach, and he understood: The cage was descending. Someone was lowering it by the crude pulley system that kept it suspended from the mammoth pine.

Clutching the handheld to his chest, he flattened himself and peered down into the dark. Torches were massed directly below him—not the patrols that circled the settlement all night, but a stationary pool of brilliance. A raucous voice yelled unintelligibly, probably directing someone to yank on the rope. The ransom from the Dissidents must have arrived.

The cage dropped again with a rough jerk. Gersha whimpered, his stomach roiling so hard he might well spill his guts on his captors. _Good. Might as well give them some trouble before they—_

But no, he couldn’t think about what they were going to do to him. He had a last chance. He had to clear his head and use it. He rolled over, ignoring the jab of twigs in his side, and woke the handheld again.

The signal was weak but still there—a single pulsing dot of light. He scrolled through the directory, making wild calculations in his head, until he reached a familiar name— _Sgt. Gavril Ardaly._

The cage lurched again. This time it kept on moving, bearing him steadily toward the ground. Gersha barely felt the vertigo, barely saw the torches approaching. His focus had narrowed to Ardaly’s name, because Ardaly and Tilrey were (probably, he hoped) together. A message that reached one would reach the other.

And whether or not Tilrey cared enough to bother to try to rescue him, whether or not this was completely insane, Gersha was going to send his last message there. _To you, love._ He composed it without hesitation, crouched on the floor of the cage, sheer force of will keeping him steady enough to tap out the characters. He hit send.

Then the cage hit the ground, and the impact jogged the handheld from his grasp. As the device slipped through the bars and vanished into the wet underbrush, triumph surged warm in Gersha’s chest. Maybe the message would go through, maybe not, but he’d done all he could. What he had to.

He was ready.

Harsh Harbourer voices were jeering above him, commenting on his ragged appearance, but they must not have seen the unearthly light of his “demon box,” or they would be angrier. _Thank everything green._ He needed Peony to be okay.

“Please just get him out.” It was a voice with a sharper edge, the distinctive accent of an Oslov speaking Harbourer. Gersha went cold inside. A quick survey of the crowd didn’t show him anyone dressed in white.

A boy wearing a wolf-skin squatted in front of the cage and worked at the lock, the torchlight setting off his white-dyed hair and tattoos. Gersha cringed, though he saw now how young and scared the Rogue boy was, how scared most of them were. Peony had taught him that.

He braced himself as the wolf-boy yanked open the door and barged into the cage, followed by a companion. He offered no resistance as they seized him and bundled him out into the wet brush, though he managed not to cower, either.

When the Rogues released him, his knees buckled, and he sank onto the spongy ground. Above him, men laughed and exchanged jibes in their dialect. He thought about the signal winging its way through the air.

Again that cold Oslov voice cut through the chatter: “Leave him. Give him space to breathe.” Then, abruptly, it switched to Oslov. “Verdant hells, it really is you. Gersha, are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

The tone had changed, too, with dizzying suddenness, becoming low and intimate. Familiar. A voice from the schoolyard, from the Sector, from his life before.

Gersha’s breath caught. For a few seconds he didn’t dare raise his head. “You’re dead,” he whispered, feeling the forest press around him, the heat of the torches on his cheeks. Was he dead, then, too?

A hand clasped his and helped him up. “No,” said Ranek Egil’s voice. “Though I suppose I should be.”

Then Gersha was on his feet looking into the face of his oldest friend—a little thinner, a few years older. Ranek’s jacket and trousers were olive green under the torchlight, not white or gray. But he was still Ranek, not a phantom or a ghoul.

_Traitor,_ Gersha realized as his mind caught up to the reality in front of him. _Exile._

But they were Oslov words that meant nothing here. Gersha took an unsteady step and half fell into his friend’s arms, his own reaching out to encircle Ranek. “Thank everything green you’re alive,” he said, squeezing his friend so tight he barely had breath for the words. “Thank everything green.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I feel emotionally drained now. :) But I'm guessing it's not a surprise to anyone that Egil didn't die in the Wastes. We're heading toward another reunion in a few chapters. Thanks for reading, leaving kudos, commenting, all of it! <3


	17. Unranked

“This has been a most interesting visit, Malsha,” Tilrey said on the morning of their third day in Placid. “But you’ve kept us here long enough, and the _weekend_ is over. It’s time to hold up your end of the deal you made with Int/Sec.”

Malsha sat swaddled in colorful shawls, as if to give credence to his supposed ailments. “I was tolerable company last night, wasn’t I?” he said. “You seemed almost entertained.”

Tilrey busied himself with his eggs. “You were more tolerable than usual, yes.”

Malsha had spent last night’s dinner in storytelling mode, informing Tilrey and Gavril all about the sprawling empire of Resurgence, its exotic capital of Cleveland, and Colonel Thibault’s mania for imitating Oslov customs. He described the ruler as a capricious tyrant, brilliant and mad at once, who did everything in her power to pretend there was no vast technology gap between Resurgence and Oslov.

When Gavril insisted that no effective ruler could be so absurd, Malsha told them how, the last time he’d visited the capital, he’d seen the fearsome Colonel playing with a fake handheld made of scrap metal. She’d convinced some of her lackeys it was a working communications device, created in her private government lab, and anyone who suggested otherwise to her face was summarily executed.

These stories kept Tilrey enthralled—and appalled—late into the evening. He knew Malsha was probably just playing with him again, but he was still grateful for a night free of leering questions, mentions of Gersha, or offers of Jack’s erotic services. The boy even sat with them and contributed anecdotes of his own, mostly about how easy it was to con or pickpocket Resurgence soldiers.

Now Tilrey’s ultimatum was sure to make things unpleasant again, but that was just too bad. He held Malsha’s eyes, trying to ignore Gavril and Krisha on his other side.

The lovers breakfasted facing each other, studiously avoiding eye contact. Last night they’d made quite a racket through the wall. Tilrey had assumed they’d patched things up, but maybe they’d only been feeling the effects of Malsha’s excellent wine.

“You know I have a job to do here,” he went on, keeping his voice level. “Have I given you enough yet of what you wanted?”

Malsha looked more thoughtful than annoyed. “Your approach is authoritative and direct,” he said, cocking his head like a teacher scoring a student’s oral exam. “You took care to remind me that my deal was with Int/Sec, thereby threatening me without being obvious about it. I give you top marks on diplomacy, Rishka. What a shame that Gersha is the Councillor, and you’ll always be the Drudge.”

Tilrey didn’t even feel the barb. “Openly pulling rank, Malsha? How crude. You’re losing your touch. Especially since—”

“—I am no longer even an Oslov citizen, and the lowest Drudge outranks me.” Malsha sighed, propping his head on a fist. “I’ll be sorry to lose your company. Krisha’s hopeless when it comes to conversation. Jack’s very clever, a good sparring partner, but he’ll never be an Oslov, no matter how many idioms I teach him.”

Krisha shoveled beef hash into his mouth, apparently indifferent to the slight. Gavril looked murderous. Tilrey shot the sergeant one of those warning glances he was becoming an expert at.

If Gavril’s only chance to stay with Krisha was to live here, then he’d have to learn to tolerate Malsha or give him a wide berth. Tilrey had a feeling Malsha wouldn’t object to such an arrangement, if only because he found the soldier amusing.

“So, we’ll leave tomorrow. At first light.” He drew a deep breath, then offered Malsha a small concession. “Before Gersha starts thinking I’m never coming back.”

A flush of pleasure touched the old man’s cheeks, rising too quickly for even him to conceal. “We mustn’t break poor Gersha’s heart, must we?”

“I don’t know if his heart would be broken.” Tilrey allowed a slight throb to enter his voice. This was what Malsha wanted from him: genuine emotion. “But, whatever our differences, he . . . wants me back, I think.”

Malsha’s eyes held Tilrey hard, as if scrutinizing him for signs of dishonesty. “Very well,” he said after a moment, apparently satisfied with what he’d seen. “Tonight the two of us will dine alone, and I will offer you the key to Oslov.”

He rose in a single, surprisingly vigorous motion and stood looking down on the three of them. “I’ll have Jack set the small table on the terrace. We can accompany our last meal with a sunset. Until then, my love.”

And he turned and walked away, his footsteps ringing on the hardwood.

Heading out into the blue-gold light of another fine September day, Tilrey caught up with Gavril under the portico. The soldier was scowling at his handheld. Krisha was nowhere to be seen.

“Well? He came back, didn’t he?”

A grin split Gavril’s face before he subdued his expression to military decorum. “He barged into my room and asked if it was true I had, uh, feelings for him. He didn’t even give me time to answer, just said, ‘The old man’s going to die soon. I’d kill him myself, but I owe him too much. When this house is mine, you can live in it. I don’t mind.’ And then, uh, well, he pushed me against the wall, and—”

“Yeah, I get the picture.” Tilrey couldn’t keep a smile off his face. “So, think you could do it? Live here in Krisha’s house?”

“Verdant hells.” A furrow had appeared between Gavril’s brows. “That would be treason.”

“No more than your idea of running off to the Wastes.”

“I know, but that’s _near_ Oslov. It’s still _cold_ there.” Gavril thrust the handheld at Tilrey, as if desperate for a distraction from this line of questioning. “You need to see this message. It came in last night while we were, uh, busy, and I only noticed it now. It’s from your Councillor.”

“From Gersha?” Tilrey seized the handheld. “Didn’t you send the message about our delay to Albertine? She should have told him not to worry.”

“This message doesn’t make sense,” Gavril said apologetically. “I mean, not to me. Because it’s for you, I think.”

Perhaps he said more, but Tilrey didn’t hear. He wasn’t aware of anything now but the words on the screen:

_You left penny. Tried to bring it back. Woods. Phantoms coming for me. Never letting it go. Remember that day in ruins. I love you._

***

Gersha woke in a white bed in a white room. A white roof slanted sharply above him.

At first he thought he was back in Oslov, and the entire trip had been a nightmare. Then he realized the room wasn’t actually white, just the pale color of unfinished wood. The light hovering on the wall was shivery and green—forest light. The whole place had the pungent, vegetal smell of recently milled lumber. And Ranek Egil was perched at the foot of the bed.

Gersha sat up too quickly. Something yanked on his forearm—was he bound? No, it was only an IV attached to a rolling cart.

“We’re giving you fluids. Take it easy.” Ranek came to his side. “You were dehydrated when we found you; that’s why you fainted.”

The last thing Gersha remembered was his old friend’s face in the torchlight. He’d been gutted by terror, soaked with adrenaline. Now he just felt lost.

“You’re alive,” he said shakily. “How? I saw the exile vid. I saw you stepping off the plane into the Wastes.”

“I got lucky. Some Outer nomads happened to sled by before frostbite set in.”

“Outers? Why didn’t they kill you?”

“We have arrangements with them.” Ranek dropped his dark eyes, as if he found it awkward even now to acknowledge his Dissidence in front of his old friend. “We have our pipelines, our ways of unexiling ourselves. But _you_ —that’s the real question. What on earth are you doing out here, Gersha?”

Gersha replayed those last terrifying moments of consciousness in his head—being pulled from the cage, hearing Ranek’s voice. “You didn’t seem surprised to see me. You said ‘it _really_ is you.’ As if you were expecting me.”

“Always the wily diplomat, eh?” Ranek pulled a chair over to the bed. Like the room, the furniture was new and crudely made, unfinished. “Well, you see, we’d been told where you were headed. Our plan was to intercept you at the inn in Keene with a message supposedly from Tilrey, asking you to wait there for him and not do anything foolish. We didn’t _want_ to have to bring you here. But you never reached the inn.”

Gersha struggled to piece things together. They must have put him on painkillers; he couldn’t quite focus, as if all the edges in the room had been sanded down. “Who told you I was coming after Tilrey?”

“Duke Dalziel.”

Ranek said the name casually, as if it were obvious. Gersha remembered Dalziel kissing his hand in the palace gardens and felt something go concave in his chest. The Duke had been so sympathetic, so helpful. “But Dalziel is our ally—Oslov’s ally. He helped me come here, gave me his guardsmen to protect me. How could he—”

“Betray your trust?” There was a cold twinkle in Ranek’s eye. “Or betray the Republic? Those are two very different things now, Gersha, if I’m not mistaken. _You_ betrayed the Republic when you chased Tilrey across the lake. You’ve already committed treason, and the Duke aided and abetted you because he thought he was doing us a favor, delivering you to us. He didn’t realize you were worth more to us in Oslov.”

_Delivering me._ The room was pleasantly warm, but Gersha shivered. “I’m a prisoner. You’re going to interrogate me, aren’t you?”

Ranek’s hand closed over his on the bedclothes, reassuring and restraining at once. “Gersha, you’ve had a terrible past few days. You need to rest. No, you’re not a prisoner—not within these walls, anyway. If we lock you in this room, it’s for your own protection. Later today, when you’re a little steadier, I’ll give you a tour and take you to dinner.”

Gersha clasped Ranek’s hand before he could stop himself, catching his friend’s fingers in a vise grip. He should ask more questions about the Duke and Tilrey. But no one’s loyalties made sense anymore; nothing did. If he was a traitor to Oslov now, if he wasn’t an Upstart or a Councillor, what was he?

He said, “There was a Rogue girl, the one who brought me food. I’m worried about her. She defended me against the others, and I don’t want her to be punished.”

Ranek peered keenly at him, as if trying to read the subtext, but Gersha knew better than to mention the handheld or his last frantic message to Tilrey. If no one had noticed the device slipping into the underbrush, so much the better. “I’m just worried,” he repeated. “She’s a kid, and they were going to make her marry an old man, and—”

“Shh.” Ranek’s free hand stroked Gersha’s curls from his forehead. “If you keep getting agitated, I’ll need to sedate you. The woodspeople have some strange customs. We’re doing our best to educate them and assimilate the teachable ones, but we don’t have much pull with the clan that captured you. If you’re worried about the girl, though, I can check with my contacts in the Fersey clan. If she’s really in a bad place, we may be able to help.”

“You could do that?” Peony seemed almost realer to Gersha than Ranek did; maybe that was the effect of two days in a cage. He missed her. “I was teaching her about Oslov, about human rights. I think she understood, even though her relatives slit the Duke’s men’s throats right in front of me.”

The scene rose before him again, and he shuddered and clutched Ranek’s hand. “They died horribly, and it was my fault. Because I thought Tilrey was going to run away to you. I know he’s one of you,” he went on, seeing the flash of alarm on Ranek’s face. “He didn’t tell you I knew, did he? I didn’t turn him in, because I couldn’t. But when he headed across the lake, I lost my head. I thought I was losing him. And now three innocent men are dead.” His laugh was dry and scraped his throat; he couldn’t meet Ranek’s eyes. “He’s not even going to defect, is he? He’s just following through with his mission.”

“Gersha.” His friend’s voice was tense with surprise—or perhaps pity. “You’re upset and confused. It must have been an incredible strain on you, keeping Tilrey’s secret. But you did the right thing, the best thing for Oslov in the long run. Rest now, okay?”

“You’re a traitor. How can you care about Oslov?” Gersha closed his eyes, suddenly unable to bear the paleness of the room—so like Oslov and not Oslov. “I’m a traitor, too,” he said—and the words were easier to pronounce than he’d imagined they could be. “I belong here—I’ve forfeited my citizenship. I killed those three men. No, I don’t belong anywhere.” _I don’t deserve ever to see Tilrey again._

“You do belong here, Gersha.” Ranek was on his feet again, doing something to the IV. “It’ll take you time to adjust—it does for all of us. When I first came here, I spent ten-days cowering indoors. But I’m happy now, more than I ever was in Oslov, because I’m finally doing something meaningful with my life. You will be, too.”

Tears swelled in Gersha’s eyes and forced themselves out through his lashes. “You aren’t going to let me leave,” he said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? I will never leave here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are on track for that reunion in Chapter 20 or 21. Much as I love the angst, I'm looking forward to writing some, um, happy bedroom reunioning again. ;) Thank you for coming on this trip with me!


	18. Sameness

“Well?” Tilrey asked as Gavril stepped under the house’s portico. He’d been pacing back and forth there for the past hour, having given up all efforts to distract himself by wandering the grounds.

The day had crawled by, each minute an hour, while they waited for the sergeant to hear back from a friend of his, an info specialist in Redda, who’d promised to triangulate the signal from Gersha’s handheld. Meanwhile, their urgent calls and messages to that handheld went unanswered.

After lunch, Gavril had gotten through to one of his subordinates in Bettevy. She said she hadn’t seen the Councillor in a few days, but the Duke assured her he was resting in his room, feeling under the weather. At Gavril’s request, she went to check on Gersha herself and reported that the servants had blocked the door. After a frantic, whispered consultation with Tilrey, Gavril made her promise not to alert the Embassy of these strange goings-on—yet, anyway.

Now it was nearly dinnertime, and the sergeant wore a grim look that set Tilrey’s heart thudding. “We’ve got a location.”

“Show me.” Tilrey peered over Gavril’s shoulder at the screen. A red dot pulsed, lost in the middle of nowhere. “Where _is_ that? Scroll out.”

The closest town to Gersha’s signal was Keene, nearly 40 kilometers distant. “That’s deep, deep in the Park,” Gavril said. “How the fuck would the Councillor get out there?”

Tilrey remembered the eerie whistles in the woods and their mad ride to Keene. _Rogues. Cannibals._ “I don’t know, but we have to find him. That message was . . .”

It had sounded like a farewell, but he couldn’t say that aloud, making it real. Instead, he focused on the most mysterious part of the message: _Phantoms coming for me._ Gersha had heard about the “phantom damned”; he’d brought up the subject as if hoping to make Tilrey confess what he knew. Could he have gone looking for the True Hearth’s secret settlement—and found it?

But the message didn’t come from the coordinates of the settlement, the ones Tilrey had memorized long ago in Thurskein. He tapped the screen and entered those coordinates, then asked for distance and directions from the location of Gersha’s signal.

“We need to call the Embassy,” Gavril was saying, pacing back and forth on the flagstones beneath the portico. “This is an emergency. They can send a copter to the spot, then a team into the woods if they don’t find him.

“No!” Tilrey scooped up the handheld. Gersha’s signal and the settlement were only about fifteen K apart. “I think I know where he is,” he said—knowing he was already beginning to betray himself, but not caring. “I don’t know _why_ he’s there, but we can find him.”

He couldn’t imagine what sort of madness had driven Gersha to the True Hearth, or how he’d found it, but those questions paled beside the raw emotion hidden in the terse message. _You left penny. Tried to bring it back._ He touched the spot where the pendant had hung until he abandoned it on Gersha’s pillow, and wondered, for the thousandth time today, why he’d yielded to such a stupid caprice.

He couldn’t let Gersha vanish into the wilderness, couldn’t lose him. If Gersha was with the True Hearth, he might be safe—but for how long?

Gavril was droning on about a long expedition Krisha had taken into the Park and how no one should attempt a rescue there without specialists trained for the job. Tilrey scarcely heard one word in four. When the sergeant reached for the handheld, he slipped it into his pocket, sinews tightening with resolution. “I won’t let you contact the Embassy, Gavril. If there’s an official rescue effort, it’ll end with Gersha in cuffs. Very possibly me, too.”

Gavril stared at him—and then, slowly, comprehension dawned. “Is he trying to defect? But he’s a _Councillor_.”

Tilrey held the gaze. “I’m not sure what he’s trying to do, but I think he came across the lake of his own volition.” _He came because I’m an idiot, and I made a stupid, bitter, dramatic gesture._ “You told me what you were willing to do for Krisha, to keep him out of a cell. I would do all that for Gersha and more, but I need your help.”

Gavril opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He must be hearing the same thing Tilrey was—the scratchy clearing of a throat, just behind them.

They turned toward the house as one. Malsha stood in the open doorway, still all in white, observing them with a placid look. “Very nice, Tilrey,” he said. “That was a stirring speech right out of a drama stream. Now, would you care to keep your appointment with me before the puff pastry gets cold?”

***

When Gersha woke again in the pale room, he was alone. The light trembling on the wall was the orange of late afternoon. He yanked the IV from his arm, pushed back the bedclothes, and stood up.

The shirkers had stripped him to his underclothes—no wonder, since his Oslov garments had been ragged and filthy. A robe hung from a hook on the single door. He walked over—his legs wobbly but functional—and put it on, then tried the knob. Just as Ranek had warned, he was locked in.

Gersha crumpled into the chair Ranek had left beside the bed and tried to let the hard facts sink in. _This will be my home for the rest of my life._ He couldn’t very well blame the shirkers for that. How could they let him leave when he could lead Oslov straight to them?

 _I will never see my apartment again. Or my office in the Sector, or the Southern Range, or_ him.

They were still just words, a lesson he couldn’t absorb. He rose again, itching to leave this miserable room, and went to the single window.

The pale facades of three-story buildings curved sinuously down a slope until forest closed in the horizon. Gersha thought of the concentric rings of Redda, only these dwellings were continuous like a meandering river. The roofs were steep and gabled, their solar panels steeping in the western light.

Trees obscured some of the view—kept plentiful to camouflage the settlement, Gersha supposed, from aerial observation. Farther down the slope, bare timber frames replaced the finished structures. Pressing his cheek to the glass, he heard the distant metallic thud of hammers, the whine of a drill.

Then those sounds were blotted out by laughter—children’s laughter. Gersha looked directly down. In a square of scrub grass, a gaggle of preschoolers was running amok, pursued by two minders in olive-green coveralls like Ranek’s.

One of the minders chanted a rhyme that Gersha hadn’t heard since his own preschool days, some nonsense about a wolf cub and his tracks in the snow. It was both a funny story and a stealth parable about the dangers of straying from the group. The children joined in the chant, some laughing uproariously, sounding just like Oslov children.

Gersha’s head was swimming; he needed to sit down. But before he could reach the bed, the door opened.

“Feeling better?” Ranek asked, slouching on the doorframe the way he used to when he visited Gersha’s office in the Sector. And that too was wrong. Unreal.

“How can you have kids here?” Gersha’s throat was dry; he could barely muster an accusatory tone. “Think of the danger you’re putting them in. What if we raze the settlement?”

Ranek arched a brow. “You mean, what if _Oslov_ razes the settlement?”

“I consider myself part of Oslov.” He should probably face Ranek eye to eye, but his legs felt shaky again; he sat down.

“We’ve considered the dangers, Gersha. Often. We know what sort of enemy we’re dealing with.”

The bed felt good, soft, but Gersha knew he couldn’t stay there or it would become another cage. “Am _I_ an enemy, then?” he asked.

“Of course not. I told you, you’re not even a prisoner. Now, would you like some dinner?” Ranek went over to a set of built-ins and opened a drawer. “But first, you need clothes. See if one of these fits you.”

When Ranek pulled out a garment, Gersha said, “Really?”

“It’s the only option we have, unless you want your old clothes back.”

Gersha stared for a few instants, trying to adjust to the fact that he was going to show himself outside in _that_. Then he said, “Okay.”

Downstairs, at street level, the settlement felt less overwhelming. Gersha’s strides became easier as he followed Ranek along the single paved road, through the forest’s dappled green light, trying to adjust to the sensation of being free and trapped at once.

He wore a loose olive-green coverall like Ranek’s, and he knew he’d never get used to it. Each step felt wrong without the high collar cinching his neck, the nudge of a tunic against his thigh. _I look like a Drudge. Worse—a factory worker._

As they went, Ranek rattled off facts and figures: population of the settlement (nearing 2,400), average age (young), housing capacity (still not enough). Gersha barely heard; he was too busy observing the traitors who were now, apparently, his peers.

He avoided eye contact with the family groups, gangs of rowdy adolescents, and staid professional types talking square footage and crop rotation. He half expected them to point and laugh at his inappropriate getup. But no one even blinked—why should they? Everyone wore the same damn green coverall, though some—and not just the teenagers—had customized it in ways that would have landed them in moral rehab back home.

Gersha felt like he’d suddenly gone nearsighted. With nothing to mark their Levels, everybody blurred together. When he focused on snatches of conversation, he could hear distinct accents: Reddan, Skeinsha, and the rough dialect of Karkei. But which Reddans were Laborers, and which Upstarts? It was impossible to tell.

Everyone seemed to be headed toward a stocky building with a first-floor rotunda. As they approached the double doors, he couldn’t hold back his question: “Is everybody exactly the same here? Isn’t it confusing?”

Ranek smiled blandly. “Are people ever exactly the same?”

“You know what I mean.”

“We have occupations based on our skills. We just don’t have Levels.”

“But how—” No, he wasn’t going to play into the shirkers’ hands. He was a prisoner, whether they admitted it or not. He wouldn’t be converted to some gospel of total equality.

The building’s first floor was a teeming cafeteria. Ranek led Gersha past the din of the queue and up a flight of stairs, a smile playing over his lips as he said, “Don’t worry. You won’t have to dine with the crowd.”

“I _have_ dined in cafeterias, Ranek. At the University, and sometimes even in the Sector.” Though he kept his voice even, Gersha was beginning to feel itchy under the skin, the way he had the time he’d concealed his Level and gone to that factory bar to drink away his sorrows over Tilrey. Even then, people had instantly known he was an Upstart. Would they know here, the moment he opened his mouth? How would they react?

Ranek swung a door to reveal a conference room with a wall of windows and a long oval table. Everyone at the table looked up at Gersha, who froze midstep.

There were about fifteen of them, all impossible to identify by Level—mostly middle-aged, some with a distinct air of gravitas, some bored looking, and some with coldly narrowed eyes.

 _They know_. Gersha swore a small oath to himself that he would act in a way worthy of his Level, regardless of whether anyone else was. He kept his head high as Ranek told the company, “I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Fir Ernst Gerhard Gádden. Gersha, these are the members of our governing council. My colleagues.”

So Ranek was a “Councillor” now—though no one would ever confuse such a ragtag body with the true Council. How many of them were Laborers? Gersha bowed his head in a way he hoped was polite and not too condescending and said, “It is an . . . well, it is interesting to meet you.”

“And you too, _Fir Councillor_ ,” said a bald man with a searing stare, a strong Skeinsha accent, and a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice.

Gersha flinched. If someone had taken that tone with him on one of his visits to Thurskein, he could have had them reassigned to latrine duty. Not that he _would_ have done such a thing, but then, he’d never needed to. Everyone respected him in Thurskein, from Tilrey’s mother on down. Everyone was honored by his visits.

“Be nice, Sved,” Ranek warned the bald man casually, as if the insolence had been a joke. He took Gersha’s elbow and steered him over to a pair of empty seats. “That’s Sved Balint—he likes to push the boundaries with new arrivals,” he muttered, pulling out a chair. “Has a chip on his shoulder. Brilliant organizer, though.”

The itch under Gersha’s skin had become a fire. He sat down and contemplated his empty plate, feeling the weight of curious eyes all around. He had been insulted, disrespected, and he’d done nothing. Were any of them even Upstarts besides him and Ranek? What sort of Upstart would put up with this?

“I hear Tilrey Bronn’s working as your secretary, Fir?” a woman said beside him. She was about Tilrey’s age, very pretty, with a crown of blond braids and vivid blue eyes. Gersha thought he’d seen her somewhere. She, at least, sounded civil as she asked, “How is he?”

“Very well,” he said, feeling a blush steal over his cheeks again. Did they all know he’d come here chasing Tilrey? Did they think he was mad, a traitor, or just stupid? “Did you know him, uh . . . before?”

“We were friends. Well, we had friends in common.” She held out her hand. When Gersha took it, she clasped his back like an equal, her chin high. “I’m Celinda Valde, _Fir_.”

Now Gersha remembered where he’d seen her—on Councillor Akeina’s arm at the Lounge, filling the same role as a kettle boy. _The shirker whore._ Suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath. “You’re the one who seduced young Fredrich Akeina into Dissidence. You tattled on him and got him exiled. Then you disappeared.”

“That’s more or less accurate.” Celinda smiled too brightly. “I was so sorry poor Fredrich ended up that way, but he was a liability for us. You’d be surprised how often these scions of high-named families are incredibly thick-headed—or maybe you wouldn’t be, Fir.”

Her tone had become so acid that Gersha’s face burned. “Are you suggesting, young woman—”

Celinda smiled impishly. “Well, _you_ were seduced by a pretty face, weren’t you?”

“Fir’n Valde, please. Gersha!” Ranek gripped his arm. “She’s just teasing you. She knows what a brilliant reformer you are—everyone here knows that.” He nodded around the table, then pitched his voice soothingly: “We’ve always seen you as working for our cause, whether you recognize it or not.”

But Gersha was not ready to be calmed like a child. He surveyed the table, meeting contemptuous eyes, cagey ones, suspicious ones. This was not the real Council; he didn’t have to maintain some imaginary dignity. “You mean that _Tilrey_ was working for your cause, pushing me toward reform and funneling everything I knew straight to you.” He turned to glare at Ranek; it was a relief to say the words, however mortifying. “You all think I’m a fool, a tool, a dupe just like poor Fredrich Akeina, and you’re holding me prisoner. Don’t pretend otherwise—you’ll just insult me further.”

“Spoken like a true stick-up-his-ass Island Party member,” Celinda muttered. “Verán would be proud.”

“I told you he’d be difficult,” said an older, dark-complexioned woman. She sounded unsettlingly like a high Upstart, though Gersha didn’t recognize her. “And they’re going to mount a major search for him. A Councillor doesn’t just disappear.”

“A Councillor who’s secretly a Dissident does.” Ranek kept his hold on Gersha’s arm. “When Tilrey returns to Bettevy, the Duke will give him our instructions. He’ll report to the Embassy that the Councillor met him on the road, tried to persuade him to defect, and then vanished into the forest. When questioned, he’ll confess that he’d suspected his master of shirking tendencies for a while.”

Gersha wrenched his arm free. “Tilrey wouldn’t say that about me.”

“He will if he has to. With the right evidence and some persuasion in the right places, he can keep his own record clean and keep on being our eyes in the Council. It’s not the resolution we hoped for, but . . .” Ranek sighed, his dark eyes liquid. “We never expected to have to rescue you from the woodspeople, either. We hoped Tilrey could bring you quietly over to our side.”

 _Oh, you did, did you?_ They saw him as a toy, a pawn. “I have been criminally foolish since I learned of Tilrey’s treason,” Gersha said, drawing himself up and meeting first Ranek’s eyes, then Celinda’s, “but I am not a traitor. When I chased Tilrey here, my one goal was to talk some sense into him before he ruined his life. In pursuit of that goal, I’ve ruined my own. But if you think for one second that Tilrey could have persuaded me to embrace the cause of this pathetic equality, this unproductive sameness, then you are sorely—”

“So you’ve never questioned the wisdom of Whybergism, Gersha? Not once?” Ranek pulled something from his coverall and set it on the table. “If that’s true, I wonder why on earth you were reading this.”

It was Gersha’s battered copy of _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour_—they must have found it in his coat pocket. The sight of the familiar cover flooded him with relief, as if he were being reunited with a friend who’d been presumed dead.

He picked up the book and pressed it protectively to his chest, remembering that Tilrey, too, had read it in the bed they shared in the Duke’s palace. _Bed. Sharing._ Had he really lived in a world where such things were possible?

He looked around the table again, this time with a strange calm. “If you’re going to make Tilrey paint me as a traitor and dishonor my name, I want to at least see him first. One last time.”

“That would be unwise,” said the woman who sounded like an Upstart, addressing Ranek. “We need Bronn to return to Oslov and continue his work.”

Gersha turned to appeal to his old friend—because, he realized with a cold stab of shame, this was not his decision. Nothing was here. No amount of oratory would sway this Council unless Ranek backed it up.

And Ranek looked firm, despite the apology in his eyes. “She’s right,” he said. “Tilrey can’t come here without putting himself in danger. Anyway, what if he took one look at you and refused to go back to Oslov?”

Gersha shook his head, blinking back tears. “Tilrey has his priorities straight. I don’t come first.” _Or even second or third, probably._ Why had Tilrey dropped that pendant on his pillow, if not to mock his feelings?

Ranek’s dark eyes were damp, too, but his gaze didn’t waver. “I’m sorry, Gersha. If I could give you a last farewell with Tilrey, I would. If it makes you feel any better, well . . .” His eyes swept the table. “One day _all_ of us will return to Oslov. That’s the knowledge that keeps us sane here. Maybe ten years from now, maybe twenty, but we’ll tread the streets of Redda again.”

Celinda said, “And we won’t be coming just to rot in Int/Sec cells, either. We’re going to take Oslov back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, introducing this whole shirker society late in the game has been a bit of a challenge. I hope I'm not shortchanging on the worldbuilding; please let me know if anything could be better fleshed out! We'll get more details in upcoming chapters. And thanks for reading. :)


	19. The Reveal

“That’s enough, thanks,” Tilrey said when Malsha had filled his glass halfway.

Malsha set the wine bottle back on the spotless white cloth, shaking his head sadly. “I wish you wouldn’t be so difficult. Believe me, I’m not going to tattle on you to Albertine. I just want to be included in what’s going on.”

They sat on the terrace, wafted by a mellow breeze, with a view of the lake glittering blindingly in the late sun. “It doesn’t concern you,” Tilrey said.

His brain was still working doggedly on how to persuade Gavril to undertake a rescue mission to the shirker settlement and how to keep him quiet about what he saw there. The sergeant had his own seditious plan, yes, but that was about romance and not politics, and his patriotism might flare up when he realized which side Tilrey had been on all along.

Malsha cocked his head. “Are you sure it doesn’t concern me? I live at the edge of the Park, after all. I _do_ know something about what’s in there.”

Taking a swallow of dry white wine, Tilrey tried to remember what Gavril had been babbling a moment ago, under the portico, while he was preoccupied—something about Krisha and the Park. _Krisha says you can’t take horses or wagons in there. We’d have to go on foot._

He raised his eyes to Malsha’s. “If you want to be included, then stop lying to me. What do you know?”

Malsha arched a brow as if to say, _You go first_ , and Tilrey went on, “You lied when we talked about the ‘legend,’ didn’t you?”

“Of course.” Malsha took a sip from his own glass. “Well, it was just a legend to me at first. I was intrigued by my housekeeper’s tale of what her trapper friend had seen in the woods, so I sent Krisha to check it out. He was away three ten-days. Those shirkers nearly killed him when they found him prowling around their secret den.”

Warmth flooded Tilrey’s cheeks—the sun and the wine combining with the realization that Malsha had known about the settlement the whole time and not said a word. More importantly, so had Krisha. _He knows how to get there._ “How’d he get away?” he asked casually.

“Oh, I sent him with a message from me, in Oslov.” Malsha shrugged modestly, sun glinting off his glasses. “It said, in essence, that if our friendly neighborhood Dissidents didn’t want me to tip off Colonel Thibault—who would steal their tech and torture them mercilessly for their knowledge if she knew they existed—then they’d need to cooperate with me. I didn’t ask them for much in return for my discretion. I was homesick and craved news from Oslov, you see.”

Many things were making more sense now. “So you made the True Hearthers into your news service. Using Krisha as messenger. That’s how you really knew about me and Gersha, isn’t it? And Gersha’s work in the Council, and . . . that I was with them.”

“They didn’t tell me you were a traitor. I had to read between the lines.” Malsha was beginning to look smug again. “Anyway, the upshot is, yes, I can help you reach the True Hearth. I can send Krisha with you as a guide—on condition that he return to give me a full account of what happens there. I’m not going to be robbed of the next act in your story, my love. But if I do help you, there’s only one outcome I’ll accept, at least in the short term.”

_The outcome of my story has nothing to do with you._ But Tilrey lowered his eyes, letting Malsha think he had the upper hand. “And what outcome is that?”

“You and Gersha back together in Oslov, of course. A return to the status quo.” Malsha picked up his fork and stabbed a puff pastry. “If you both ran away to become shirkers in the wilderness, it would be such an anticlimax. And you wouldn’t have much use for the information I intend to give you.”

Since reading Gersha’s message, Tilrey had practically forgotten the purpose of his mission here. It was very hard to care about Int/Sec’s objectives. “Talk about anticlimax,” he said, filling his own mouth with the light, buttery pastry, stuffed with a nutty-tasting vegetable he didn’t recognize. “You’ve been teasing me with your big reveal for days now, even promising it’ll make me the most powerful person in Oslov. It can’t possibly live up to expectations. Why don’t you just spit it out before my eyes roll out of my head?”

Malsha chuckled until he had to cough into the pristine white napkin. “I like you this way—saucy. I wonder if it’s Besha’s influence. Fine, I’ll tell you. But first, a story about my family.”

Tilrey planted his elbows on the table. “Malsha, this isn’t amusing anymore. I don’t even know if Gersha’s with the True Hearth right now. He was some ways off from them last night. He could have been caught by the natives. He could be—”

“I know!” The old man flashed Tilrey the earnest, guileless gaze that used to earn him so many votes in the Council Chamber. “But it’s not safe for you to chase after Gersha now, at night. You’ll leave first thing tomorrow, with Krisha as your guide. I’ll have him prepare the supplies tonight. Meanwhile . . .” He turned his eyes to the setting sun, poised on the mountaintops like a bloated orange. “Indulge me. I need you to understand the legacy I’m passing to you.”

Tilrey propped his chin on his palm, feeling beaten. “Fine. Get on with it.”

But he had to wait while Jack brought out a stew of chicken, red wine, and mushrooms. The last stripes of orange tipped the house’s brick chimneys, outlining them luridly against the violet sky.

The breeze blew colder from the lake as Malsha finally began: “It starts with my great-uncle Edvard, who came to Resurgence as a spy when he was a little younger than you. He was gathering intelligence on one of Colonel Thibault’s predecessors, assisted by a young woman, a Laborer. When they were both detected and captured, we mounted a salvage operation. The strike team rescued my great-uncle. But the Drudge girl—well, when the soldiers realized they couldn’t get her out cleanly, they shot her in the head. So she couldn’t be used against Oslov.”

Tilrey wasn’t surprised. “She was expendable. A tool.”

“Edvard was more naïve than you. Not until that moment, when he saw himself rescued and his teammate sacrificed, did he realize that Oslov is no meritocracy. He called it ‘a ruthless aristocracy with none of the fun.’” Malsha cocked a brow. “He wrote that in a seditious manifesto that he published a few years later, while he was working at the Embassy in Bettevy. Maybe the Duke told you about it?”

“ _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour_.”

“That’s right. I never knew my great-uncle. When he returned to Oslov, he went mad, or so they said, and died in moral rehab. But in my teens, I got my hands on his manifesto—my dad had a copy hidden in his study. I devoured it. Back then, I was naïve, too, full of sober, idealistic faith in my country—like your Gersha, I imagine.”

Tilrey tried to imagine it. “I hope this is going somewhere.”

“Oh, it is. The manifesto set my young mind in a whirl. But it didn’t really change me, not yet. The seed didn’t bear fruit until I came to Bettevy as an envoy, following in my great-uncle’s footsteps. The Duke introduced me to a beautiful young courtesan named Gurevan, who was also an adept political player. I wanted nothing to do with him, severe and moral as I was. But Gurevan seduced me—and not just physically.” A fond smile wavered on the old man’s lips. “He looked a bit like Krisha, only more delicate. My first love, perhaps my truest one.”

The sun slipped beneath the rim of mountains. Malsha jerked upright, as if a spell had been broken, and poured them both more wine. This time Tilrey didn’t stop him.

“Anyway. It was that little Harbourer whore who taught me everything I know. He made me see that the Republic of Oslov and Whybergism are soap bubbles. Pleasant fictions we choose to believe in. A single touch, and—” Malsha feigned a flick of the finger, then the bursting. “What’s left? The bare truths of power.”

“You’ve made that very clear to me throughout our acquaintance.” Tilrey washed the stew down with a guzzle of wine. The broth was rich, the mushrooms smoky-flavored; at least he was enjoying one part of this meal.

Malsha ignored the dig. “Unlike my great-uncle Edvard, I didn’t let that truth drive me mad. I absorbed it, and I went back to Oslov, and I used it.” Again the nostalgic smile. “But I never forgot the whore who educated me. When I met you, I remembered my lost love. And now, out of gratitude to him, I’d like to give you the same gift he gave me.”

“Okay. Great.” Watching Malsha draw out the suspense for another instant would be unbearable. “Is it Besha? Because I already know—”

“—that he helped me arrange the missile strike on Colonel Thibault’s enemy? Yes, I thought you might have guessed. The True Hearthers said you and Besha were allies. I couldn’t imagine how that would happen without blackmail. No, I’m not going to tell you something you already know.” Holding Tilrey’s eyes, Malsha stretched his hand across the table. “Do one thing for me first.”

_Of course it comes down to this. Of course._ Tilrey knew what Malsha wanted, and he knew it wasn’t about sex but about power, not that Malsha had ever recognized a difference.

Pride and impatience battled in his chest, but impatience—and habit—won out. He took hold of Malsha’s hand, raised it, and brought it to his lips the way he’d done hundreds of times before. The wrinkled palm was warm and familiar. Somewhere far away in memory, he heard a voice saying, _When you belong to me, you’re safe_.

It had felt good sometimes, too—to be safe, or to believe he was. To be sheltered by power. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he swept his tongue across the palm as if licking sap from it.

Malsha gasped as Tilrey released his hand. His index finger flicked a lock of hair out of Tilrey’s eyes, then traced a path down the temple. That gesture, too, was so hypnotically familiar that Tilrey closed his eyes for a moment and let it happen—until he remembered when and where he was, and pulled away.

Malsha sighed softly on the exhale. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “Colonel Thibault is obsessed with conquering and destroying Oslov, just as her father and grandfather were before her. She knows she doesn’t have a chance head-on, but she does have one advantage: numbers. Resurgence has at least five times the population of Oslov.”

The sky was darkening fast, a planet sparkling like a diamond pin above Tilrey’s head. He felt oddly lightheaded, as if he’d survived a near-fatal accident. “So what? When you’re still figuring out steam power, Oslov is a world away.”

“Yes. The Colonel’s grandfather once tried to mount a land invasion of Oslov, but needless to say, we saw him coming. So the Colonel’s father pioneered a new strategy.” Malsha leaned forward, his voice as low as if they were in Oslov, surrounded by surveillance. “When Edvard Linnett was a spy in Resurgence, he learned of this plan in its earliest stages. He never told his superiors. But if you read _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour _carefully enough, you’ll find coded references to it.”

“Would you just tell me already what the plan is?”

Malsha sighed, clearly reluctant. “The Colonel’s father sent his people by boat and on foot to the Wastes, where they mixed and interbred with Outers. Their mission was to attain Oslov citizenship and blend into our society. No doubt very few have succeeded, and those who did may have forgotten where they came from and the mission they were given. But a few of them _will_ remember. Or their children will. And when they receive a signal, they will strike.” A finger-slash in the air.

“Really?” Tilrey took a certain pleasure in rolling his eyes. “Resurgents are infiltrating us, disguised as Outers, and they’re going to kill us all, and you learned this from decoding your mad great-uncle’s manuscript?”

“No. I heard this from Colonel Thibault herself; only after that did I fully understand the obscure hints in the _Marriage_. It’s very possible Thibault exaggerated the scope of the operation, as is her wont. But what this means, Tilrey, is that Redda is full of—or at least dotted with—potential assassins who wish Oslov harm. We wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, but the world comes to us. It’s inevitable. The bubble bursts.”

“ _This_ is your secret?” Maybe the wine was going to his head, but Tilrey couldn’t take it seriously. “I see nothing but boasting and speculation.”

“Oh, it is both of those.” Malsha sat back in his chair. “But if it’s true, neither Int/Sec nor the True Hearth knows a thing about this. Which means the Resurgent infiltrators are a wild card that could play a _very_ important role in the coming revolution.”

Tilrey flinched at a word he’d never let himself use. How easily it rolled off Malsha’s tongue. “Possibly,” he admitted. “But to make use of that knowledge, wouldn’t someone have to know who these infiltrators are? Where they are? How many there are?”

“Indeed. Remember Artur Threindal?”

“Your secretary.” Before becoming Malsha’s secretary and the repository of his secrets, Artur Threindal had been his kettle boy. It was he who’d given Tilrey an education and orientation in the position, and Tilrey thought of the young man with a mix of fondness and resentment. “When you were exiled, Artur disappeared. With you, I assumed.”

“Yes, he came with me, but we parted ways fairly quickly. Artur wanted to return to Oslov any way he could, even if it was to the Wastes. The Colonel offered him a position training her sleeper agents, teaching them how to blend in with Oslovs. Last I saw him, he was based in Weigand, a tiny settlement in the Wastes near Base H98. Besha could direct you there.”

It sounded like a wild goose chase. “I still don’t see how these ‘sleeper agents’ could threaten the whole Republic. Our borders are airtight—you can’t just slip into Redda or Thurskein.”

“Indeed. But there are certain Outers we do allow through our borders—and we even grant them citizenship, when it suits us. Think of Krisha.”

“What about him?” Then Tilrey understood. “You’re talking about whores.”

“Last I checked, nearly fifteen percent of workers in the Sanctioned Brothel were Outers by birth. The percentage is probably much higher in the underground establishments. And who patronizes these brothels the most?”

“Upstarts. Councillors, even, if you’re talking about the Sanctioned. So you’re saying . . . that’s where they could strike us from inside. That’s where we’re vulnerable.”

Malsha’s eyes practically glittered through the dark. “I always told you _you_ were the key to Oslov.”

Tilrey resolved privately to ask a few questions of Irin Dartán, whose aunt ran the Sanctioned Brothel. “That’s very poetic,” he said acidly. “Technocrats brought low by their animal desires— _if_ it’s true.”

“You mustn’t waste this information by giving it to Int/Sec, Tilrey.” Malsha leaned forward again, urgent, as Jack came out carrying a tray. “I can give you a bunch of other juicy tidbits to feed my daughter—dirt on my old cronies, mostly. That should cause a bit of a shake-up.” He grinned ghoulishly. “But keep this to yourself until you figure out how to use it. And you will.”

They sat in silence as Jack cleared the main course and replaced it with two dishes of layered custard, fruit, and sponge cake. “Ah, trifle. You’re going to like this, Rishka,” Malsha said, catching Jack’s hand and stroking it.

Jack endured this with equanimity. “How’d you like the cacciatore, Fir?”

“Oh, brilliant. Like everything you make.” Malsha rubbed the boy’s hand against his cheek. Tilrey looked away.

“The boy’s very, very good at everything he does,” Malsha added, turning to Tilrey. “I think you would have enjoyed him.”

Tilrey felt blood rush to his face, grateful it was now nearly too dark to see. “I don’t get any pleasure from using people like things.”

“That may be, but you also knew he’d report back to me.” Malsha sighed. “I was curious, I admit. I suppose I’ll just have to imagine how things will transpire between you and Gersha when you reunite.” He drew Jack’s finger across his own lips. “I’m guessing the two of you alternate the roles you play. If I were Gersha, I’d certainly want you to fuck me sometimes. All that golden muscular resolution and rage—”

Tilrey rose in a single movement, scraping his chair across the flagstones. More than anything, he was grateful for the excuse to leave. “Go ahead. Fantasize about us. No matter how many scenarios you make up in your fevered imagination, you’ll never know how it feels to fuck somebody you love.”

“I beg to differ.” The voice was so gentle it sent a shiver down Tilrey’s spine. “I did and do love you, in my way.”

For an instant, the pressure inside Tilrey’s skull was so intense he couldn’t speak. Then, to his surprise, a hot flood of words came: “I used to think you understood the difference between rape and coercion and love. I thought it just amused you to pretend not to.”

Malsha sounded almost wounded as he asked, “Your point being?”

“Have you started believing your own lies now? All your sickly-sweet talk about ‘our intimacies’ and ‘our relationship’? Because I pity you if you do.”

The old man didn’t answer this time. Maybe he was smiling condescendingly at Tilrey’s attempt to get the last word; maybe the message had sunk in. There was no way to tell in the dark, so Tilrey went on: “You’ve played all your cards, Malsha. I’m done here. Write me a handy list of ‘tidbits’ for Int/Sec and tell Krisha to prep for tomorrow.”

With an apologetic glance at Jack, he scooped up his dish and spoon. “I think I’ll retire to eat this somewhere your master’s not.”

As he stalked back to the house, he heard Malsha tell the boy, “See what I mean? His rage is lovely.” But his tone was flat, observational, without the usual purr of satisfaction.

Tilrey didn’t stop until he reached the portico, where he found Gavril slumped on the steps to the lawn, smoking his pipe. The confrontation had set his adrenaline going; he needed to _do_ something. “Why are you moping around out here?” he asked, sinking down beside the sergeant. “Krisha being difficult again?”

The grounds were nearly dark, bats winging across the lawn. The pipe lit Gavril’s face as he inhaled, showing Tilrey a furrowed brow. “Nah, he’s meeting me after his chores. But this plan of yours, to rescue Gersha—it’s crazy. If I don’t call the Embassy and tell them everything, I’m committing treason.”

Tilrey spooned up the trifle. His limbs were still buzzing, but his brain felt calm now, or perhaps only numb; Malsha did that to him. “You _haven’t_ called the Embassy yet, have you?”

Gavril shook his head, looking pained. “Couldn’t do that to you. But we’ll never find Gersha by ourselves, Tilrey. We don’t know these woods. We—”

“But Krisha does—he told you so.” The trifle was the sweetest thing Tilrey had ever eaten. Sugar exploded in his brain like fireworks, chasing away the fug from the wine. “And Malsha’s sending him with us as a guide.” He raised a hand to forestall the sergeant’s objection. “You want more time with Krisha, don’t you? To make your own decision?”

“Yes, but . . .” Gavril’s eyes met his, serious and reproachful. “It’s treason for us to do this without orders. There’s something you know that you’re not saying—and Krisha’s holding back, too. I may not be as smart as you, but I can tell when somebody’s not being straight with me.”

“I want to be straight with you. But . . .” _You’re just not ready._

To his surprise, Gavril only nodded curtly. “Been on plenty of missions. I understand need-to-know. I’ll do it, but you gotta promise me one thing—that this is for Gersha, so you can get him back, and nothing else. No other agenda.”

“I promise.” The words came without hesitation. And as they clasped hands, sealing the deal, Tilrey felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

***

When the sky lightened again, a wagon stood before the portico, loaded with wilderness supplies and drawn by a sturdy chestnut and bay from Malsha’s stables. The Duke’s three guardsmen settled themselves in the back, yawning and rubbing their eyes, while Krisha made last adjustments to straps and bridles.

Tilrey had tried to sleep, but visions of a frightened, suffering Gersha kept him tossing and turning. Now he came down the steps, the coffee that Jack had brewed filling him with hectic energy, though he knew in another few hours his body would want to crash again.

The plan was to drive to Keene, where the guardsmen would wait at the inn with the wagon while Tilrey, Gavril, and Krisha entered the woods on foot. From there, the journey could take two or three days, Krisha had warned, depending on weather and “interference.” Krisha would steer them clear of the Rogues’ actual settlements, but marauders always posed a threat.

Tilrey wore the buckskin again, soft and heavy. _Please let me have made the right choice_ , he thought, watching Gavril climb up beside the guardsmen.

If the Rogues had Gersha, he might be dead already. A helicopter from the Embassy might have saved him, and Tilrey would have no one but himself to blame for not making the distress call.

He needed to believe Gersha was with the True Hearth. He _did_ believe it. And if it were true—it _was_ true—then only he had even the faintest chance of persuading them to let Gersha go.

“You look quite dashing,” said a voice behind him. “But are you going to abscond with my china?”

The sun had just appeared above the tips of the firs, washing the fluting of the house’s chimneys. Malsha’s face remained in shadow. He wore a splendid dressing gown, not unlike one of Davita Lindblom’s Harbourer imports.

Tilrey swallowed the rest of his coffee and handed the cup back to Malsha. Their fingers grazed each other, but Malsha made no attempt to extend the contact. “So this is farewell,” he said.

“Yes. From Keene, we’ll return to Bettevy.” _With Gersha, if I die trying._

Malsha produced a letter from his dressing gown. “The tidbits of information for Int/Sec, as I promised.”

“Thank you.” Tilrey wanted to turn and leave with no ceremony, but a question held him. “Why did you drag me all the way here to tell me your secret? Just because you’re sentimental about some little whore you fucked when you were young and stupid?”

Malsha gazed at him—and, to Tilrey’s surprise, the old man’s eyes grew damp. “Do you really not understand what I’ve been telling you? Did you forget what I said last night about soap bubbles?”

“You said a lot of things.” Could this be another of Malsha’s performances? Tilrey couldn’t remember him ever looking quite so desolate.

“Rishka.” Malsha took a step toward him. “I didn’t just fuck that ‘little whore.’ I loved him—yes, I was capable of that once. And I know you don’t want my advice, but I can see you’re as much in love with that fool Councillor as he is with you. If you want him back, back for good, do one thing. Stop seeing yourself as his inferior.”

Impulses clashed in Tilrey’s head—impatience, anger, and a strange sense of vindication. “I don’t see myself as his inferior,” he said automatically. And then, changing his tone to cold sarcasm, “That’s amusing advice coming from you, Malsha.”

“You need to _understand_.” Malsha’s eyes had dried, and they fastened on Tilrey’s as if he were speaking his dying words. “I took advantage of my power over you—oh yes. I do understand what coercion is. But if I hadn’t known you were my equal in all the ways that mattered, I wouldn’t have bothered. It wouldn’t have been any fun.”

“This tells me nothing new about you.” Tilrey turned to go, his throat closing.

The old man seized his sleeve, tugging him back, his eyes still alight with that strange urgency. “You say you’re equal, but you don’t feel it. Until you stop _believing_ the difference between you and Gersha means something, you’ll always be just that scheming little whore. Free yourself, Tilrey. You can be so much more.”

Tilrey yanked himself free, telling himself the words didn’t resonate. It was all just more manipulation, building him up to tear him down. “Thanks for the words of inspiration. Whatever happened to that ‘first love’ of yours, anyway?”

“Oh, he betrayed me. And then I betrayed him in revenge.” Malsha’s eyes had misted again, but he made no attempt to reach for Tilrey. “It didn’t end well for us. But Gersha’s a far better man than I am. I hope you are, as well.”

_So do I._ Feeling a distant flutter of pity inside him, Tilrey held out his hand. “Goodbye, Malsha.”

Malsha clasped his hand palm-to-palm like an equal. “Never forget anything I’ve told you. You _could_ be the key to Oslov’s future, Tilrey, in a deeper way than you know.”

It was an absurd conceit, but Tilrey let the old man have it. “Well,” he said, “I’ll do what I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will return to Gersha in the settlement, but I wanted to take some time to bring this Malsha arc to its end, while also setting up some stuff for a potential next leg of this saga. Phew! That was intense, but I think Tilrey got some catharsis. Thanks as always for reading! :)


	20. Survivors

To his surprise, Gersha liked weeding the collective garden.

It was calm. It was slow. As he worked up a row of kale, yanking grass and other interlopers from the moist earth, the sun warmed him through the coverall. The soil had a rich, pleasant smell, and each time he cleared the space around a plant, he felt he’d accomplished something.

Everyone here had chores in addition to their regular jobs; even programmers and council members spent a few hours daily scrubbing pots or tending vegetables or children. Given the settlement’s size, Ranek said, a stricter division of labor wasn’t practical. Besides, Whyberg himself believed knowledge workers should do occasional menial work to keep them connected to the “real world.”

“Don’t quote Whyberg at me,” Gersha had muttered. But at breakfast on his second day, he’d asked for something to do, and they’d shown him the garden, and it certainly beat sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

“You need this,” said someone above him.

It was Celinda Valde, holding out a wide-brimmed straw hat. Gersha stiffened, but she didn’t look like she was about to start mocking him again, so he took the ridiculous thing and put it on. “Thanks.”

Celinda knelt and began weeding the adjacent row. “When we go back indoors, I’ll get you some sunscreen. It’s one of the biggest adjustments from Oslov, learning to protect yourself. With your complexion, a burn wouldn’t be pretty.”

“The Duke warned me about that.” Gersha returned to his weeding. It felt wrong in a deep, radical way to converse with a Laborer without using honorifics or formalities. He did it with Tilrey, of course, but that was different, and it had taken them both a while to get used to.

He’d talked to Peony like an equal, he supposed, but that didn’t count because they’d both been speaking Harbourer. Could he ever get used to it in his mother tongue?

They worked in silence, Gersha noting the slow trickle of sweat down his neck. It was a sensation he rarely had at home outside the gym or a bath—or sex, he remembered before he could stop himself—yet there was something satisfying about this tangible proof of effort. Whyberg _had_ done work like this—in greenhouses, if he remembered correctly. How strange that latter-day Upstarts had abandoned it.

“Ranek told me about the girl who protected you,” Celinda said when their work brought them close again. “The one in the Shumpike clan. He said you want to do something for her.”

Why had Ranek told _her_ his business? But Gersha was too eager to talk about Peony to keep silent. “She’s the daughter of some kind of warlord. They were going to marry her off to an old man.” He filled in the other details, unable to stop his voice from shaking as he recalled the child’s naïveté. “She was so interested in Oslov. She couldn’t believe there was a place where women have power.”

“Yeah, that’s how they all react.” Celinda was already past him and starting another row, forcing him to realize how slow his own progress had been. “I run a kind of refuge for girls from the woods-clans,” she went on. “We’ve got a workshop set up where they weave blankets and clothes for us, and I teach them to read and write. When they’re ready, if they are ready, we assimilate them to our general population. That’s the plan, anyway. We have to be careful, though, because the clans are polygamous and see girls as wealth.”

“Do they try to stop you?”

She yanked at a stubborn thistle. “Sometimes they threaten us with blood and mayhem, but there’s not a whole lot they can do when we’ve got cannons aimed at them from the top of the wall.”

Gersha had been unconscious when they brought him through the high wall protecting the settlement; now it was just a flat, ugly horizon he sighted occasionally, obscured by trees. He made a mental note to go see it up close—he needed to know the dimensions of his prison. “Do you think you could get a message to Peony? Help her leave her clan and come here?”

“It’s not easy, but I’ve got channels. We do some trading with the clans—not tech, just stuff like food and lumber. They’re all outlaws, so we don’t have to worry about them tipping off the Resurgents. So yeah, I’ll try. But . . .” Celinda stopped weeding and looked at him, a long braid trailing from under her own hat.

“But what?”

Her full lips twisted. “You’re used to having people just do your bidding, aren’t you?”

Was that what Laborers thought of Upstarts—that they sat around giving orders? “Actually, I do a _lot_ of things for myself. I coded and debugged my own database. I used to brew my own tea and fetch my own lunch at work, until Tilrey insisted—” The look on her face made him break off. He sighed. “I suppose I am used to that. Overall.”

Celinda flashed Gersha a smile that reminded him of the radiant grin Tilrey always used when he wanted something. “Well, it’s not like that here. I’ll help you find your girl, but I need help with something in return. Two-way street.”

Gersha bristled inside, but he tried to look amenable, likable, the way he had with Peony. “Whatever I can contribute.”

“Transmissions.” He stared at her, and she went on, “You know exactly what I mean, because you deal with them in Int/Sec. You intercept Colonel Thibault’s primitive telegraphic messages, you decode them, and you use your Harbourer database to interpret them.”

Gersha flushed red as he imagined what Albertine Linnett would think of this conversation. “Why do you need to decode the Colonel’s transmissions?”

“I don’t know, maybe to keep ourselves alive?” Her tone cut like a knife. “We’re in the Colonel’s territory, Gersha. She doesn’t know we’re here, and we need to keep it that way. That means keeping tabs on her.”

Gersha was remembering what she’d said last night at the dinner table. “You boasted about returning to Oslov— _invading_ Oslov. Colonel Thibault’s army would certainly swell your numbers. How do I know you aren’t hoping to make her your ally?”

“She’s not anybody’s ally. She’s a power-hungry psychopath who would steal our tech, kill us, and try to take on Oslov by herself.” Celinda rose and stood looking down on him, hands on hips. “If you help us with this, it could save lives.”

_At the ultimate expense of other lives in Oslov?_ But Gersha had learned in the Council chamber that direct confrontation often served no purpose. He lowered his head and pulled up another tufty growth, dislodging a shiny beetle that would have alarmed him a ten-day ago. “So you won’t help Peony if I won’t help you?”

Celinda looked tired. She wiped her hands on her coverall, then the sweat from her brow. “Am I going to ignore a girl who could be in trouble because you’re a true-believing Strutter bastard who’s no use to us? Back home, yeah, maybe I would have sacrificed your little friend just to spite you.” Her blue eyes flashed. “I would’ve spat on you and walked away.”

“But here is different?”

There was something in her expression that Gersha couldn’t read, wasn’t used to. “Yeah. There aren’t many of us here in the Southern Hearth. We need to stick together.”

“But I’m not one of you.”

“You are now, whether you like it or not.” Celinda thrust her hands in her pockets. “Maybe you’ll understand one day. Maybe you’ll look at those kids playing over on the green and realize that breaking your stupid fucking security protocols could mean saving them from a stealth attack.”

“That’s not fair,” he objected. “There are kids in Oslov, too.”

“And we don’t plan to hurt any of them when the revolution comes. But that’s a debate for later, I guess. Ranek says we need to give your natural sense of justice time to work.”

“Oh, does he?” Gersha tugged the barb of a thistle from his palm and sucked it. He didn’t like the thought of the shirkers discussing him, predicting his behavior, but at the same time he felt oddly flattered. _Ranek knows I’m not just some lazy tyrant. He knows I have principles._ “Maybe Ranek thinks he knows me better than I know myself.”

“Maybe.” Celinda looked skeptical. “Now, do you have any more details that could help us ID this Peony? Does she have any tattoos?”

***

“He’s too damn fast,” Gavril complained as Krisha disappeared among the trees.

“He’s surer-footed than we are. Someone needs to blaze the trail.” Tilrey breathed in the rich scent of leaves decaying on the forest floor, savoring the zing of endorphins that came with steady exercise.

Earlier today, after leaving the road, they’d fought their way through nearly impenetrable evergreen thickets, pricked by thousands of tiny needles. Now they were traversing a long, green valley where lofty trees kept the undergrowth to a minimum. The pace was punishing with their heavy backpacks, but he was catching a second wind, and every step got him closer to Gersha.

Gavril was still fretting. “He shouldn’t go on so far ahead. This place is dangerous.”

“He said he could steer us clear of Rogues.” The valley was starting to tilt upward; Tilrey shifted his pack and slowed his breathing, preparing for a vigorous climb. Krisha wanted to camp on a mountaintop tonight.

“How’s it going with you two, anyway?” he asked. “One moment you’re all over each other, and the next you’re looking daggers. I can’t keep up.”

The sergeant sighed theatrically. “I tell him I’m considering staying here with him, betraying my homeland and leaving my whole life behind, and his response? ‘Okay.’ It’s like he doesn’t give a fuck.”

“Or doesn’t know how to show it.” Tilrey ducked under a fallen branch and lifted it for Gavril. “When Krisha and I talked, I offered to let you down gently if he wanted to get rid of you. He nearly bit my head off. I don’t know what love means to him, but he seems to want you all to himself for as long as he can have you.”

“He acts that way, but I don’t know what it _means_.” Gavril sounded like he’d never parsed emotional states in his life and wasn’t sure he could start now. “I don’t want to stay here with him if it’s gonna be like it was when we first met, at the garrison.”

“Meaning?”

Gavril hissed in a breath through his teeth. “I wanted Krisha so much back then, but those other bastards had hurt him so bad, I couldn’t let myself touch him. I let him sleep in my room, in my bed, but only to protect him.”

“But he kept coming on to you.” The slope was getting steeper, the tall trees yielding to scrubby evergreens; Tilrey grabbed a trunk to steady himself. The story was all too familiar. “And eventually you said yes.”

“Yeah. Back then, he’d act like he wanted me, but I don’t think he liked it. Even when he came, he’d have this dead look in his eyes.”

Tilrey extended a hand to help Gavril onto a rocky plateau. “Things changed, though. When?”

“Later. In Redda. When I found Krisha again, he was different—older, bigger, stronger. Said he could take care of himself and didn’t need me. When I asked him questions—about the Sanctioned Brothel, about Linnett—he blew up at me. I tried to say sorry. But he just kept getting madder, and then he grabbed me and kissed me, and . . .” The sergeant paused, winded, and took out a bandanna to wipe his face. “Well, that was the first time Krisha took me and not the other way round. Think he was surprised that I let him. I didn’t mind how rough he was, either.”

“You liked it,” Tilrey surmised, remembering what he’d seen on the bench. He had a brief, stinging memory of Gersha squirming against his fingers, begging to be fucked for the first time. Tilrey had been so afraid of losing control, of giving in to his own desire. When he finally had, he’d been a rocket shooting across the sky. And oh yes, Gersha had liked it, too.

Gavril nodded, his eyes averted. “When he fucks me, it’s the only time I really get to see how he feels. Panting and crying and desperate—you know how it is.”

Tilrey shifted the pack again, catching his breath. Was that what Gersha had wanted? Well, he’d certainly seen “how Tilrey felt” now, the best and the worst of it, including the cringe-worthy sight of him down on his knees begging to give Gersha head. If Krisha secretly adored Gavril as much as—well, as much as Tilrey adored Gersha, no wonder the man had trouble expressing it.

_Stop seeing yourself as his inferior_ , Malsha had said.

Maybe that was the problem—Krisha’s problem, anyway. “Krisha’s waiting for you to tell him what to do,” Tilrey suggested. “His whole life, he’s been getting orders. He’s confused when you ask him what he wants. So don’t ask him—tell him.”

Gavril’s blue eyes were damp. “Don’t want him to obey me. Want him to _want_ me. Don’t want him to wake up one day and realize he’s been my prisoner this whole time.”

“I know, but sometimes—” Tilrey broke off as Krisha loped back down the slope toward them, swift and nimble where they were panting and shambling.

“C’mon,” the Outer called, his face not giving away whether he guessed what they’d been talking about. “Need to make the summit by nightfall.”

Tilrey shot a glance at Gavril and forced his aching muscles into action. “I think we know who’s in charge right now.”

By the time they built their campfire on the granite brow of the mountain, the stars were bright, and the last glow in the west was nearly gone. They were too tired to talk as they ate a quick supper of Jack’s buttery ham-and-spinach biscuits, but Gavril and Krisha seemed more at ease with each other. Once Tilrey even caught Krisha giving the sergeant a playful nudge in the ribs when they thought he wasn’t looking.

Tilrey took the first watch, sitting beside the fire with Gavril’s rifle on his knee. If he took a later one, he feared, he wouldn’t be able to stay awake.

Below their summit perch stretched the Park, a vast sea of darkness. Now and then he thought he saw the fleeting flicker of a torch or campfire. The abyss below mirrored the bowl of the sky, stars blazing in the near-black through the hazy radiance of the Milky Way.

Tilrey remembered walking in the Southern Range with Gersha, pausing to trace these same late-summer constellations through the eerie light of the aurora borealis. His arm around Gersha’s waist, warming and steadying the smaller man against the frigid wind. And then, afterward, on the rug in the glow of the faux woodstove—oh, how he’d made Gersha moan, and vice versa, while that wind howled outside. They could have been the only people in the world on those evenings. Tussling and nipping and grunting and gasping and begging—

His hand slipped toward the hardness between his legs—and then, with a jolt, he realized he wasn’t just remembering those amorous sounds. He was hearing them, or something similar. Off in the single tent at the edge of the forest, Krisha and Gavril were at it again.

More power to them, but this was damned awkward. Tilrey returned his errant hand to the gun barrel, feeling his erection subside along with the thoughts of Gersha. _Soon. Soon._ Would Gersha still be repelled by his touch? With good reason? Best not to think about that.

Best not to listen, either. He tried, but by the time Krisha emerged from the tent to take the second watch, an hour later, Tilrey was all too aware that Gavril was the loud one. He’d moaned almost as vociferously as Besha did, though Krisha had given him some competition.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” Tilrey said a bit tartly, watching as Krisha sauntered to the edge of the cliff and pissed off it, silhouetted against the stars.

“Did.” With no apparent embarrassment, Krisha plunked himself down and reached for the rifle. “You go rest.”

Tilrey handed over the rifle, which he still didn’t feel comfortable holding, but stayed put. For Gavril’s sake, he wanted to sound Krisha out again. Plus, he’d noticed something this morning that he wanted to get to the bottom of—something that suggested Krisha wasn’t actually thick or even “inarticulate,” as Malsha untactfully put it. “Gavril’s a lucky man,” he said.

Krisha grunted something that sounded like “Shut the fuck up.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. Besides whatever you can do in the bedroom, you’re really good at this wilderness thing. Good with horses, too. I hope Malsha recognizes your value.”

“You want something from me? Buttering me up?” But the compliments seemed to stick in Krisha’s craw; after a moment, he added, “Fir Linnett says I’m clever like stupid people sometimes are. With my hands and stuff.”

With guilt, Tilrey recalled he’d had the same thought about Krisha many times. “Or perhaps you’re not stupid at all,” he said, “only playing dumb. Today with the guardsmen, for instance, you were speaking Harbourer like a native.”

“Lived here a while. Picked it up.”

“Not everyone picks up languages so easily.”

Krisha got up, gave the fire several pokes, and fetched himself a biscuit. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, sitting down again, “but I didn’t have to ‘pick it up.’ You know my accent that you’re always makin’ fun of, calling it ‘from the sewers of Karkei’ or whatever?”

“I never said that!” Tilrey searched his memory. “Well, I wouldn’t say it _now_. I only made light of your accent because, well . . . I had an accent of my own, and Upstarts wouldn’t let me forget it. I lost it as quickly as possible.”

Krisha shrugged as if this made no difference to him. “Well, anyway, how I talk, that ain’t a Karkei accent. Or even an Outer accent. It’s a Harbourer accent. My ma spoke Harbourer.”

“She did? But your mother was an Outer, wasn’t she? Gavril told me—”

“We lived in an Outer village, yeah.” Krisha rested his elbows on his knees, gazing into the abyss. “Ma spoke Oslov to me, mostly. But she told me she was from another place, a green place far to the south, and that was our real home. Here, I think.”

Tilrey shook off his drowsiness, remembering what Malsha had told him about Colonel Thibault’s plan. “How could your mother have come so far?”

“Dunno. That’s just what she told me. And something else,” Krisha went on, his voice taking on an edge. “She hated Oslovs. She said they lorded it over everybody else in the world ’cause of their weapons. She said that wasn’t just, it wasn’t right, and one day her people— _our_ people—would come north and rise up and kill all of them. All of _you_.” He smiled jaggedly, as if hoping Tilrey would take offense.

But Tilrey’s thoughts were on another track. “She was part of a conspiracy to infiltrate Oslov? Did she tell you who sent her north in the first place?”

Krisha’s eyes widened. “Don’t know anything about a conspiracy. She never answered my questions. She was crazy, my ma—really hated Oslov’s guts, though.” Again the wolfish grin.

“Maybe she wasn’t so crazy. Does she still live in the Wastes? Do you know where?”

Krisha’s expression blanked out like a chalkboard wiped clean. “I ain’t seen Ma since I was fourteen and the Oslovs came to our village and burned it down. Said we were harboring smugglers. Ma got caught under the burning roof. I was outside, but I couldn’t do nothing ’cause the troops were holding me.” A shrug. “They took me away. Never spoke Harbourer again till the Fir brought me here, but it came back pretty quick.”

“Did you tell Malsha this?” Tilrey scrutinized the man’s face, wondering if Malsha could have heard Krisha’s sad history and been inspired to concoct the story of Colonel Thibault’s plan.

But Krisha looked perfectly natural as he said, “Nah, he never asked much about my past. Don’t think he wants to hear about my crazy ma. Anyway, I don’t speak Harbourer around the Fir—don’t want him to know I understand. He uses it whenever he tells Jack something he doesn’t want me to know.”

“I knew you played dumb, Krisha.” Tilrey pushed aside his speculations about Resurgence and Outers; what use were they now? If Malsha had spoken the truth, he still had no idea what to do with the information.

“So,” he asked idly, “do you still dream of doing what your ma wanted? Rising up and killing Oslovs?”

A grunt. “If I dreamed about that, I’d be a fool. Ain’t no sense fighting something that strong.”

“You’re a survivor, aren’t you, Krisha?” Tilrey stood up and stretched his sore muscles, gazing into the valley. “But there are other ways to have revenge. And you must hold a grudge against Oslovs. For that burned village, for your ma, for everything they did to you in the garrison. You must hate us, deep down. I would. Whenever Malsha told you to hurt me, you didn’t hesitate. You weren’t cruel, but you weren’t kind, either.”

“Following orders,” Krisha muttered as if the memory embarrassed him.

Tilrey ignored that. “What about Gavril—is he just another Oslov to you? Is that why you toy with him?”

Krisha was on his feet in an instant, up in Tilrey’s face, his strong fingers digging into Tilrey’s shoulder blades. “Fuck _off_.” He walked Tilrey a step toward the cliff edge. “I should just throw you off. Too smart for your own good. Never been anything but a thorn in my side.”

Tilrey didn’t struggle; the better he knew Krisha, the less he was intimidated by him. “Fine,” he said breathlessly. “You don’t want revenge. You don’t hate Oslovs. Maybe in your mind, you even _are_ an Oslov, just like me or Gavril. Maybe that’s why you’re so confused.”

And Krisha must be confused. _We killed his mother, we broke him, and now he’s got no home but us. No values but ours._ For an instant, remembering how hard it was to think outside the ways he’d learned to think in Redda, Tilrey hated Oslov, too. Weapons and tech were nothing. The Republic’s real power lay in seducing you with its perfect, orderly system, its promise of safety— _that_ was what the True Hearth should be fighting.

Krisha was still reacting to his earlier taunt. “Fuck you. I _told_ Gavril he could live with me.” He released Tilrey—who stumbled backward—and flung himself down on the ground. “What more does he want?” he added, low and anguished, as if he were really incapable of imagining what Gavril might want to hear. “If you’re so fucking smart, you tell me. Tell me what I should say to him.”

Tilrey sat down again, wondering if he’d ever get any sleep. Empathy for Krisha pulsed in him, but Krisha would hate that, not because he was proud but because he knew what was done was done. Broken or not, you might as well work with what you had.

“Do you promise not to throw me off the cliff?” he asked.

Krisha answered without irony, “If you promise not to make fun of me. Anymore.”

“It’s a deal. I know what you can tell Gavril to make you both happy.” He sighed, because it was absurdly obvious and at the same time, apparently, not obvious at all. “If you can’t bring yourself to say, ‘I love you,’ then say, ‘I _want_ you to stay with me.’ Seven little words, Krisha, but be sure to include ‘I want.’ That’s all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm excited about what happens in the next chapter. Thanks for coming on this (long) journey with me! :)


	21. The Wall

On the third morning of the journey through the Park, as they descended a long, treacherous escarpment darkened by tall pines, Tilrey heard a mournful whistle in the distance.

He grabbed a trunk to stop his momentum and stood still, listening. Beside him, Gavril reached for his rifle.

“It’s still far off,” Tilrey whispered over the thunder of his heart. They were so close now—on track to reach the wall of the settlement by noon, Krisha had said. The Rogues were probably just signaling to each other, oblivious to the intruders’ presence, not stalking them as they had on the road. Otherwise, they would have attacked by now.

When he heard the whistle a second time, it sounded closer. Sweat ran into his eyes, blurring his vision, as he strained to listen. Gavril had quietly raised the rifle to his shoulder and was peering through the scope.

Someone was moving up the slope toward them, nearly soundless in leather-soled boots. Gavril aimed the rifle, then lowered it with a gasp of relief as they both recognized Krisha, who’d been blazing the trail.

“Down there,” the driver half whispered, half mouthed, pointing toward where the shaggy wall of pines opened to the sky. “Haven’t seen us yet. Need to go back up. Around.”

The prospect of a detour reignited all the aches in Tilrey’s thighs and calves and shoulders. _So close._ The pack felt heavier as they turned and headed up the slope again, winding among the trees, pine needles forcing them to struggle for footing.

“Faster,” Krisha hissed. And Tilrey found a last core of strength inside him and sped up the slope, his lungs and legs pumping furiously as he vowed that he _would_ see Gersha before night fell.

***

On his fourth morning with the True Hearth, Gersha found himself listening to the council’s breakfast meeting with something approaching actual interest.

Over mugs of a tepid herbal stimulant that was vastly inferior to proper tea, they discussed a family dispute that had come up for adjudication. A young man wanted to marry one of the native Clan Fersey girls who had found refuge in the settlement, and his parents were trying to prevent the match by having him declared mentally incompetent.

“Keziah speaks Oslov almost fluently,” Celinda pointed out, speaking on behalf of the young couple. “She knows all our rules, our principles. She embraces them.”

Sved Balint, the Laborer who’d been insolent to Gersha on their first meeting, made a dismissive sound. “The girl was raised praying to a sky god. She’s got no place here, and the boy will realize that once his infatuation fades.”

“You were raised praying to the god of meritocracy,” Celinda snapped. “Our ancestors prayed to the Spark.”

“It’s not the same. We were taught to use our brains.”

“Were we? Or were we just taught to shut up and obey our betters?”

“We had models for freedom, even if they were broken. How can a tribal theocratic barbarian raise her children to be free?”

The dignified woman named Ulka, whom Gersha had pegged early on as a likely former Upstart, intervened: “If we think this girl’s faith in a sky god overrides our principles, then maybe we don’t have much faith in our principles.”

“Perhaps _some_ of us don’t,” said a redheaded woman.

Beside Gersha, Ranek tented his hands and spoke in the calm, reasonable way he always did in these meetings. “The assimilation of Outers—or whatever we want to call these woodspeople—is a test of our principles and our cohesion. Before implementing it on a large scale, we may need to put it to a Hearth-wide vote. Meanwhile, though, this boy’s in love, and seemingly in his right mind.”

“Arguably!” said the redhead.

“The freedom to marry is a basic freedom.” Ulka spoke with a resonance that silenced the side conversations. She was clasping the hand of the smaller, mousy woman beside her, making it clear they were a pair.

Sved was beginning to turn purple. “The freedom to marry another Oslov of the same sex is irrelevant. Not even remotely analogous! The two of you have worlds more in common than young Jan-Andreas ever could with his wood sprite.”

The sparring continued from there, but Gersha absorbed very little after _the freedom to marry another Oslov of the same sex_. Could he have misheard? He’d never heard someone propose such a possibility at home, let alone describe it as a “basic freedom.”

When the meeting finally broke up, he slipped away from Ranek and joined Ulka, who was piling the group’s dishes and mugs on trays. Gersha grabbed a tray and worked alongside.

When Ulka saw what he was doing, she flashed him a glance that was half-tickled, half-skeptical. “Eager to help with my chores, Fir Councillor?”

“I hope I’m not in the way, Fir’n.” He’d noticed they all liked to address each other with the honorific, though it no longer differentiated anyone. “I don’t have an official chore schedule yet, so I help out where I can.”

Ulka gave him a second tray to stack atop the first. “I remember you from home, Fir,” she said. “When I was an educational Admin, you helped us with the revamp of the Prime linguistic software. You may not remember—you were just out of University then, I think.”

“I remember you.” Gersha wasn’t sure he did—he’d been so shy in those days that he kept his eyes on his screens, away from faces—but he wished he had. “I didn’t recognize you till now, but I did think you might be—”

“An Upstart?” She smiled at him, a wry twist to it. “When I first got here, Fir Gádden, I was the same. Always trying to find the fellow Strutters, wanting to believe we were special and different in ways I could see. These days, I don’t care in the least.”

To his surprise, Gersha found he didn’t care either, or not as much as he’d expected to. The two of them had something in common besides their former Level, something that mattered more. “I was curious about what you said about the freedom to marry.” He lowered his voice. “Confused, actually.”

Amusement flickered over Ulka’s face. “You didn’t know Katrine and I are married?”

Gersha stared at her. His vision blurred from the effort of not showing he was shocked—no, shaken, in a way and to a depth he couldn’t explain.

She smiled back, the expression softening as if she understood. “By the laws of the Southern Hearth, anyway.”

“Ranek didn’t tell me such things happen here. Marriage—”

“—is for procreation. Yes, I can quote Whyberg, too. But we have a different view of marriage. We see it as a bond.” Ulka picked up two loaded trays of her own and led him out of the room and down the stairs. “Do you want to be even more scandalized, my dear Councillor? Katrine was my secretary in the Sector.”

An Upstart and a Laborer. Two women. Married. Gersha was grateful for the din of the main cafeteria; it distracted him from the frantic beat of his heart. Before he could stop himself, he was remembering lying beside Tilrey in their bed in Oslov (when it had been their bed). Clasping Tilrey tight to his chest, he’d whispered, “If you could be mine forever, if you could marry me, would you?” And Tilrey laughed and said, “Married people are miserable,” while Gersha insisted, red-faced, “We wouldn’t be.”

_If you could marry me, would you?_ It was an absurd, whimsical question, but it had haunted him ever since. It was still absurd, because he would never see Tilrey again, but . . .

Ulka swung a door into the steamy industrial kitchen, where they deposited their trays on a conveyor belt. As they emerged back into the relative quiet of the stairwell, Gersha asked, “Is that why you turned to Dissidence? For Katrine?”

Ulka stopped and faced him, arms crossed. “Would you like it to be that simple?”

“I didn’t say—”

“It started that way, yes.” She fixed him with her amber-flecked eyes, head high. “I wanted children, but I had no desire for a husband—or for anyone but Katrine, for that matter. If she’d been a man, I might have chosen to be Lowered so I could be united to her. She wasn’t, so that was impossible, and it made me think about all the other possibilities that Oslov makes impossible. When I found a group of like-minded people to discuss those possibilities with . . .” She shrugged. “One thing led to another, and here we are. With a son and a daughter who are very much _ours_.”

Something prickled at the back of Gersha’s throat. “But you left behind your family, your colleagues, your homeland, your friends. You betrayed . . . you _vanished_.”

“None of it was easy.” She didn’t drop her gaze. “But sometimes, Fir Gádden, one has to leave oneself to find oneself. I wonder if you already know something about that.”

***

Tilrey swatted at a mosquito on his neck. His hand came away bloody. Krisha’s detour had taken them through a seemingly endless swamp, where their boots sank ankle-deep and insects feasted on every centimeter of exposed flesh. Now they were ascending a bank, headed into the forest again, but he couldn’t find a way around the blackberry canes that caught at his clothes and hair.

He plowed doggedly along behind Krisha, refusing the temptation of plump berries. The sun was past the zenith, the day cooling as clouds moved in. _Before nightfall, goddammit, I will see him._

Behind him, Gavril said, “These berries are fucking amazing. Are they what Jack puts in his tarts?”

“No doubt.” Tilrey turned to find the sergeant paused in the greenery, placidly munching. He suppressed a surge of irritation, reminding himself that Gavril had never wanted to be here. The sergeant knew it was tantamount to treason not to alert the Embassy to Gersha’s situation, yet he was being remarkably cooperative and helpful. He’d even figured out how to block the signals from their ankle trackers using a jammer on his handheld and a screwdriver.

Gavril held out a handful of berries, his grinning mouth stained with juice. Tilrey took an obliging step toward him. “But while you’re busy enjoying the local flora, we need to—”

The sharp, metallic _snap_ only made him blink at first. He tried to raise his right foot and couldn’t. Something was holding it down, clamping it way too hard, and _oh shit—_

He felt no pain until he was flat on his back, staring up at a sea of shifting emerald-green leaves. He must’ve lost his balance. The pressure on his ankle was merciless, unyielding—something manmade. And here came the pain, a red core pulsing at the pressure’s center, but that was okay, he could handle pain. He just needed to get there by nightfall. He needed to _walk._

He tried to wiggle his toes, but the motion jogged his ankle. The pain core went white-hot, and he gasped, his stomach lurching.

Blackberry canes thrashed. Gavril and Krisha appeared in the gloom, their faces stony. “It’s a bear trap,” Krisha said, kneeling beside Tilrey. “I’m gonna get it off—hold still. Take a deep breath.”

Tilrey obeyed. He felt Krisha’s hands positioning him, stretching his leg out, and tried to pretend the electric surge of pain was happening to somebody else. He closed his eyes and sucked in another breath as Krisha told Gavril to get a tool from his pack. “It’s a fucking big one.”

Both men worked for several tense minutes, grunting and swearing, applying different kinds of pressure to the trap’s spring. Tilrey told himself he was grateful for their calm military competence as he stuck a knuckle in his mouth to bite down on.

Finally the trap opened, the steel pressure vanishing, and he clenched both fists and sat up. The pain remained, an alternately warm and cold tingling that snaked up his ankle to his calf. But there was no blood, only the start of a vicious bruise.

When Tilrey saw the spring had caught his ankle tracker, crushing its processing node, he laughed weakly. Gavril joined him. “Guess we won’t have to worry about that tonight.”

The laughter brought a helpful adrenaline surge. Tilrey braced himself on his good foot, preparing to stand, but Gavril shoved him back down. “Bone could be broken. Krisha, get me the medikit.”

Tilrey lay on his back, trying to focus on the tiny pricking of blackberry canes against his exposed neck and forearms, while they examined the throbbing ankle. “I can walk,” he protested as the sergeant bound it tightly, using a stiff strip of bark as a makeshift splint.

Gavril shook his head. “We better camp for the night. I’m not a medic, but I think you’ve got a fracture.”

“Then we should get to the fucking settlement, where there probably _are_ medics.” Tilrey twisted toward Krisha. “How far?”

Krisha squinted at the horizon as if doing calculations in his head. “No more than three K.”

“That’s nothing!” Tilrey got his good foot under him and grabbed for Krisha’s hand. The driver yanked him up easily, hooking his shoulder under Tilrey’s arm so his body served as a crutch.

For a queasy instant, Tilrey remembered how it felt when Krisha used all that strength against him. But it was nearly ten years since he’d felt the weight of that muscular body crushing him into the mattress, and now the pain in his ankle was receding, replaced by an all-over tingling energy. _Go. Go. Before nightfall._ He wrapped his arm around Krisha’s back and held on tight. “I’m ready.”

“You’re both crazy.” Gavril scowled. “Three K on this kind of terrain? With you like that? We can wait overnight.”

“And get found by the Rogues? I’ll walk there on a broken bone if I have to.”

“Could probably carry you,” Krisha suggested.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Oh, fuck. Okay, okay.” Gavril ducked under Tilrey’s other arm and looped it around his neck. “Let’s go.”

***

Gersha meant to return to the garden for weeding duty, but something drew him inexorably to the settlement’s exterior wall. He needed to see the limits of his prison.

It didn’t take long to get there. When you were deep inside the settlement, with its dense development and thick belts of woods, the snaking wall was easy to miss, but it was probably no more than a couple K from any given spot.

Cleared of trees for several meters on either side, the wall was at least six meters tall and perhaps close to a half-meter thick, made of concrete and crowned with razor wire. At the top, mounted cameras whirred, trained on whatever lay beyond.

It was very similar to the wall that kept the inhabitants of Thurskein from fleeing into the Wastes, though that one was even broader and taller. Gersha wondered if anyone here appreciated the irony.

A well-trodden path wound through the tall green grass along the wall. He followed it, looking for a gate or door. The settlement received its shipments from Oslov via a small airfield within the wall, as Ranek had shown him, but there also had to be ground egress. How else had they hauled him in from the forest?

The white sky, marbled with bruise-purple, made it hard to tell the hour. Gersha had spent most of the afternoon at Celinda’s refuge for woods-clan girls, meeting her dozen protégées. Aged ten to nearly thirty, they were eager to interact with Oslovs, Celinda said, so he’d learned their names and showed them simple math on a blackboard.

They were shy of Gersha at first, addressing him with downcast eyes and exaggerated respect. After an hour or so, though, they seemed to peg him as harmless. One of the bolder girls offered to teach him to knit, and they all formed a circle around him, calling out advice and giggling as he failed to master the most basic stitches.

By the time Celinda rescued Gersha, his face was beet-colored, but he was laughing, too. “Never been much good with my hands,” he said ruefully as they stepped outside.

“They like you. You should come back again and tutor them.”

“Give them some comic relief, you mean?” His blush hadn’t faded. “No, but really, I’d like that. I can teach them sums, and they—”

“—can teach you to knit.” Celinda grinned. “Maybe. And I’ve got news about your Peony—I found someone from the Fersey clan who knows her. I sent a message. If she wants to leave, our contact will tell her how.”

Gersha wanted to ask how or where the girls entered the settlement—he was starting to think of it as “the Southern Hearth,” the name everyone used here—but he didn’t dare. He wondered again as he came around a curve in the wall and heard raucous young Oslov voices.

Four teenagers stood in a huddle against the wall, three of them shielding the fourth. She was, Gersha realized as he came closer, defacing the concrete with spray-paint.

Reflexive outrage rose in him. He reached for his handheld to report these little agents of chaos to the nearest Constable—then remembered that he wasn’t in Oslov, he did not have a handheld, and there were no Constables. Or were there? He hadn’t seen any.

Catching sight of him, the teens wheeled defensively and tightened their huddle. A boy and girl made insolent attempts to stare Gersha down, but the girl with the spray-paint didn’t pause in her work.

Coming even with them, Gersha saw what she’d written: _Better dead than buried alive._ Now she was adding an impressively detailed cartoon of someone strung up from a tree and dripping blood. The martyr wore a jaunty grin.

“You gonna report us?” the staring-down boy asked, eyes narrow. “Go along, old man, get to it.”

“We don’t need an audience,” said the insolent girl.

To his surprise, Gersha barely felt rattled by their adolescent contempt. “What does that mean?” he asked, pointing at the artist’s work.

The insolent girl popped her eyes. “Are you fresh from the cold?”

“Excuse me?”

“You come from there?” She pointed at the sky. Then north.

“I’m new here, yes.” He almost added “from Oslov,” but they knew that, surely. Where else?

“Listen to him, he’s pure red-card,” said the boy. “Never done anything but stare at screens and keep his precious hands clean.”

They drifted away from the wall and surrounded him, except for the still-busy artist, who seemed completely absorbed in her drawing. Gersha backed away, unsettled by the hunger in their eyes.

But instead of throwing rocks at him, the way the children of Peony’s tribe had, these kids lobbed questions. Was he an Upstart? Did he have an important position back home? An apartment to himself? A car? When Gersha answered in the affirmative, their faces grew incredulous, then pitying, then almost angry as they asked follow-up questions: Why had he come here? Was he weak-minded? Had he committed an awful crime?

“No! Of course not!” Gersha wanted to tell them he wasn’t even a shirker. But he didn’t like the way they were looking at him, like he had something they were desperate to possess for themselves.

“What does ‘buried alive’ mean?” he asked, trying to flip the interrogation on its head. “Who’s buried alive?”

Instead of answering, his captors brayed with laughter, high-pitched and hysterical. They made such a ruckus that the graffiti artist finally stopped working to fix her calm gray eyes on Gersha.

“Who do you think?” she said. “We’re buried alive, and now so are you.”

“That’s nonsense,” Gersha said automatically, thinking of all the ways Oslov itself was fenced in. “This wall is _protecting_ you.”

The insolent girl snapped her teeth. “That’s right—better watch out! You go out there, the clans’ll dismember you and hang you from three different trees. They’ll make your teeth into jewelry. You’ll wish you’d never come south!”

So that was the meaning of the grotesque drawing. Their elders must have frightened them with tales of the Rogues’ atrocities, reasons to stay safely behind the wall. Did they know about the peaceful, thriving city of Bettevy beyond the lake? Or did they think they were surrounded by barren wastes populated only by brutal tribes who put no value on human life—the same essential message that all Oslov children learned?

Yet the figure in the cartoon was bleeding and smiling.

Gersha stared at it. “You know the risks, and you’d rather be out there than in here.”

“Who says we’re ‘in here’?” the artist asked, lip curling. “Maybe we’re already ‘out there,’ and you just can’t tell.”

She yanked up her sleeve as if to prepare for a fight. One of the boys tugged her away from Gersha. She yelled, “Stop it, Vanya!” The boy yelled something back, but Gersha didn’t hear, because at that moment the world exploded.

A siren whooped above them, so loud that Gersha covered his ears as if a physical weight were pressing on him. Red lights flashed at the top of the wall among the razor-wire. The kids scattered, their graffiti abandoned.

Gersha only knew he wanted to get away from the noise, so he ran, too—straight into the path of a half-dozen men and women in black coveralls, visored helmets, and flak jackets. Constables? He dodged behind a power generator and watched them jog purposefully toward the wall.

They weren’t chasing the kids, who’d disappeared. Had the vandalism set off the alarm, or something else? Gersha slipped from his hiding place and followed the black-clad officers at a distance, weaving in and out of the last line of trees before the clearing.

They were congregating at a place where the wall was marked with a grooved rectangle about head high. A door.

***

“Shit, shit, shit,” Gavril groaned as the alarm whooped above them. “What the fuck?”

Tilrey was so lightheaded from the painkiller the sergeant had given him that the high wall barely seemed real. Was he back in Thurskein, skiing to the boundary?

No. He was being half carried across scrubby grass toward a concrete monstrosity topped with flashing red lights, camera-eyes, and razor-wire. As they came to a shaky stop, a round black muzzle poked from the concrete at head height and swivelled until it was pointed directly at them.

“That’s a fucking A-46 machine gun. It’s _us_. It’s our tech. Shit.” Too exhausted or resigned to reach for his rifle, Gavril used his free hand to mop his dripping brow. “What the fuck have you done to us?”

“It’s okay!” Tilrey had no free hand to raise in surrender. He shouted at the wall, straining to be heard over the sirens: “The True Hearth never stops burning!”

The sirens continued. Gavril tried to take a step away, lurching and nearly bringing them all down. Krisha barked, “Stay still! They gotta see us on the cameras. Then they let us in.”

“You _knew_ about this?”

All at once, the sirens quieted. The lights stopped flashing. In the sudden silence, three sets of ragged breathing were way too loud. They could hear birds trilling their evening songs and grasshoppers keening.

“This is insane, fucking insane,” Gavril whispered as a crack began to open in the wall. Concrete slid into concrete, baring a green rectangle. An amplified voice ordered, “Remove all weapons and place them on the ground a meter in front of you. We will count down from five. One—”

“Do it.” Tilrey freed himself from Gavril’s grip and put his weight on Krisha, wincing as he tried not to collapse inelegantly to the ground. “Gavril, please. We’re not in danger. I’ll explain everything.”

***

From his hiding place in a thicket, Gersha watched the black-clad officers escort the intruders into the settlement, his heart thudding.

The first inside was a big man dressed in rustic Harbourer clothes—Sergeant Ardaly. His hands had been cuffed, and he appeared to be arguing with his captors.

Next came a tall, black-haired man who looked half-feral. Uncuffed, he stared straight ahead of him, sparing not a glance for the men hustling him inside. And last, leaning on an officer’s shoulder—

Gersha didn’t make a decision. One moment he was in the thicket, and the next he was dashing across the grass, still feeling the scrape of twigs on his neck and ankles, headed straight for the painfully familiar form he’d never expected to see again.

His heart battered his ribs as strong arms seized him from behind and yanked him to a stop. Normally he would have capitulated, but now he kicked out viciously. _You can’t keep me from him._

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground with a knee on his chest and a rifle in his face. “This is a security operation,” a woman’s voice droned from behind the helmet, which was smooth and reflective as an insect’s carapace. “Do you want to be charged with disruption?”

“Irinov! Stand down!” Another of the bug-men tugged off his helmet and somehow became Ranek. He was beside Gersha in an instant, helping him up from the grass as he told his colleagues, “It’s okay. Since he’s here, we might as well let him—”

Gersha didn’t stay to hear the rest. He shook off Ranek’s grip and ran straight for Tilrey.

They collided in a ragged embrace, Tilrey’s free arm going around him as Gersha pressed him to his chest with all his strength. For a moment, nothing else existed. Not the officer who was cursing and extricating himself from Tilrey on the other side, not Ranek’s hurried explanations in the background, not the looming wall or the white sky. Only the prickle of Tilrey’s stubble against his cheek and the warmth of Tilrey’s breath.

“You’re hurt,” Gersha said, fitting his face into the familiar curve of Tilrey’s neck while doing his best to hold him up. “How are you here?” And then, as he remembered what that wall meant, “ _Why_ are you here?”

Tilrey’s breath emerged in a sob. “I came for you, you idiot.” And he collapsed in Gersha’s arms, pulling them down into the grass together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! That was a long chapter, but I wanted Gersha to experience a little more of the settlement before he got his Tilrey back. Will there be some serious reuniting in the next chapter? I think you know the answer. ;)
> 
> Also, I did some actual research on bear traps for this chapter. :) Apparently they will not leave you a bloody mess, as so often shown in the movies, but exiting them requires a lot of force. And they're illegal in the current, pre-Collapse U.S., but clearly not in Harbour.


	22. Together

Gersha was wearing Tilrey’s lucky penny.

As he bent over Tilrey, the copper coin tumbled from the neck of his drab green coverall and sparkled under the fluorescents of the infirmary. He started to tuck it back in, but Tilrey reached up and caught hold of it. “Just like your message said.”

Gersha’s green eyes had been shining with tears ever since they collided on the lawn. Now they flowed down his cheeks as he tugged the chain over his head. “That was a farewell. I didn’t mean for you to come after me—I thought they’d kill me here. I just wanted you to _know_ —”

“Shh. I know. You keep it for now.” Tilrey stopped Gersha from removing the chain, then brushed sweaty curls out of Gersha’s eyes. He was all too aware of the crowd around the gurney: the tech setting up an IV of local anesthetic, the doctor snapping on gloves—and, most worryingly, Ranek Egil watching the whole show, a shiny black helmet under his arm.

When he first laid eyes on Egil, who was supposed to be dead, Tilrey had thought he was hallucinating. But as his initial shock faded, and he absorbed the fact that Egil was not just alive but in charge here, he began feeling a familiar resentment. Why hadn’t he been told the truth? When the True Hearth wasn’t keeping him in the dark, it was yanking his chain. Right now, Egil looked royally pissed at him, as if only the presence of medical personnel was stopping him from delivering a dressing down.

Tilrey had had just about enough of it, but he’d deal with Egil later. The important thing right now was to breathe through the pain and take in the sight of Gersha—safe and sound—and the pressure of Gersha’s steady grip. He hadn’t released Tilrey’s hand all the way to the infirmary, walking beside the gurney over the protests of the med-techs.

“Shh. I’m okay.” Tilrey hoped those tears weren’t over his injury. “It’s just bruises. I don’t think anything’s even broken except the stupid tracker.”

The doctor cleared her throat. “There’s a good chance you have a fracture. We’ll see in a minute.”

“Well, I’m not dying.” He reached up again with his free hand and cupped Gersha’s face, sweeping away a tear with his fingertip. Why did Gersha look so shattered now, when last time they’d seen each other it was Tilrey who was reduced to inarticulate tears? What had happened to his proud Councillor?

“Why’d you come after me, love?” he added before he could stop himself. “I wasn’t in any danger. I would’ve come right back to you.”

“I didn’t know!” Gersha’s voice was choked. “You weren’t going where you were supposed to. I didn’t know it was part of the mission. I thought you were escaping. Never coming back.”

“Escaping to Resurgence?” From everything he’d heard of Colonel Thibault, that would be suicide.

“No, here. To the phantom damned.”

It all made a horrible kind of sense. Tilrey lay rigid as the tech demanded his free arm, probed it for a vein, and inserted the IV. When the anesthetic was flowing, and Gersha’s grip on his other hand had loosened a little, he said, “I would never just run away. Not from Oslov and . . .”

He wasn’t quite ready to say _not from you_ —not after the humiliation of the night they parted, or of being expelled from Gersha’s home and bed. Gersha seemed to understand, though. He raised Tilrey’s hand to his lips and kissed it, then released it so the doctor could wheel him into radiography.

After the doctor announced grimly and a little smugly that there was indeed a fibula fracture, though not one requiring surgery, Gersha took possession of Tilrey’s hand again. He held it throughout the procedure, as the doctor removed the remains of the ruined tracker and set the bone.

“I’m not in pain,” Tilrey assured him. The local had taken care of that. But Gersha kept hold, as if he worried that Tilrey might leap off the gurney and over the wall and disappear back into the woods. Tilrey let himself relax into the fuzziness of the painkillers, remembering a time when he’d had complete confidence in his little Councillor’s power to care for and protect him.

Except, had he ever had _complete_ confidence? After all, Gersha had given him to Egil, who’d locked him in a box and grilled him. And here was that damned Egil again, hovering around the gurney, scowling in his high-handed way that reminded Tilrey of the Sector.

When Tilrey’s ankle had been set and encased in a plastic boot that looked ready for an Oslov winter, Gersha asked the doctor, “He doesn’t need to stay here, does he?” He turned to Egil. “I want him in my room.”

“Fine. Your building has a lift.” Egil tapped on a handheld. When he raised his eyes, though, they glittered dangerously. “But before you head there, I need you to step out so Tilrey and I can talk alone.”

Tilrey closed his eyes and sank into the pillow, bracing himself. He wasn’t scared of Egil, certainly not after dealing with Malsha, but it had been such a long day. He wasn’t even sure where Gavril and Krisha were. Last he’d seen them, Gavril had been in cuffs. The True Hearthers knew Krisha, who must have vouched for his lover, but had he convinced anyone? Given his own lack of mobility, he’d have to ask Gersha to check on them, to make sure they weren’t being treated like enemies, to—

Above him, the voices had gotten louder. “I think it would just be easier—” said Egil, sharp as a knife.

Gersha’s tenor cut him off, surprisingly firm. “I told you already, the answer’s no.”

Tilrey’s eyes snapped open. Were they arguing? About him? He squeezed Gersha’s hand and reassured him, a little muzzily, “I can handle a talk. Feel fine.”

“No.” Gersha sounded more severe than Tilrey had heard him since . . . well, since the night he’d thrown Tilrey out. “I’m not leaving you. Anything Ranek wants to say to you, he can say with me here.”

“Fine. You win.” Egil ran his hands through his usually impeccable dark hair, mussing it into chaos. Then he turned and fixed Tilrey in the eye. “Gersha might as well hear this, too, so it sinks in.”

Tilrey tried to smile. “Have at me.”

“What the _fuck_ did you think you were doing coming here? Don’t you realize how important you were to us at home? The work you were doing in the Council was making huge strides for us, and now—” Egil shook his head, rage pulling his mouth down. “Now you’re worth no more than anyone in this settlement.”

Maybe it was just the drugs, but Tilrey didn’t feel at all intimidated. “I know I took a risk by coming here.”

“A _risk_? What you did was unconscionably stupid.”

Gersha tried to jump in, but Tilrey waved him into silence. This was his fight. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Ranek, but we’re not in Oslov. You can’t do all the things you used to—lecture me like a child, threaten to lock me up.”

Egil’s eyes flared as he stabbed his finger toward something none of them could see. “I don’t need to, because you’ve locked _yourself_ up. What do you think that wall means, Tilrey? When you set off on your little crusade for love, did it occur to you you could never go back?”

They both spoke at once, Gersha protesting, “He thought I was in danger,” while Tilrey said, “Who says I can’t go back?”

Egil crossed his arms. “Who _says_? How about that loyal, pig-headed army sergeant you brought with you? He’s seen for himself that we’re smuggling weapons in here. You can’t go back without him, and if you go back with him, the game’s up for us.”

Tilrey shook his head. His fuzzy brain balked at the task of explaining the whole story of Gavril and Krisha, but he managed: “You don’t know the man. He’s on a little love crusade of his own. Planning to go back to Placid and disappear.”

“Is that what he told you?” Egil asked. “He’s been ranting at my officers, calling them shirkers and smugglers. I wouldn’t trust him two meters outside this wall.”

“Ranek!” Gersha kept hold of Tilrey with one hand while grasping his friend’s shoulder with the other, nudging them apart. “Stop this. Let him be. He doesn’t owe you anything.”

_Oh, don’t I?_ Egil and the other True Hearthers seemed to think they owned Tilrey just as surely as Malsha ever had, but now was no time to confront that misconception. “It’s okay,” he said woozily. “I just need to talk to Gavril myself; he’ll be quiet. I’ve got everything worked out. We can go back safely, Gersha and I, nobody the wiser. If you’d let me just explain . . .”

But when Tilrey let his eyes close—to rest for a second, no more—his explanations vanished into a mellow haze. He saw those blackberry canes above him again, the emerald leaves forming a protective roof over his head. In the distance, he heard Gersha going on another tear and Egil giving as good as he got. His last impression as he slipped into unconsciousness was that Gersha sounded as desperate and vehement right now as Gavril did when he was talking about Krisha. Like a man in love.

***

Gersha was still shaking with rage an hour later, when Tilrey was settled in his bedroom— _their_ bedroom now—on the top floor of the apartment block. Ranek had arranged for a couple of burly med-techs to move them there, then fetch them dinner from the cafeteria. Maybe that was his way of making amends. But he hadn’t actually apologized, and Gersha didn’t plan to let him forget it.

“Shouting at him doesn’t accomplish anything,” he’d hissed at Ranek while the techs transferred zonked-out Tilrey to a wheelchair. “He didn’t know what he was doing, don’t you see? You need to let _me_ explain.”

Sooner or later, Tilrey would accept that they weren’t leaving. But he couldn’t be sledgehammered into it; he needed to be coaxed into understanding, as Gersha was starting to, that life inside the wall could be good for them. Strange and different, but good. That might take time, but they had plenty of that, didn’t they?

Nothing but time. The sun had struggled out of the clouds and was bathing the back wall of the gabled room. Gold mingled with the wavering green of the maple outside. Gersha sat on the bed beside Tilrey, drinking a mug of tepid tea and listening to the even sound of his lover’s breathing. It wasn’t a big bed, but he’d assured the techs they’d be fine sharing.

Maybe later they could get a few rooms to share, with a bigger bed—a suite like he’d seen married couples occupying. Maybe they could _be_ a married couple—it was still hard even to formulate that phrase in his head. What if Tilrey laughed? What if he said no?

Gersha must have dozed off for a bit. When Tilrey said, “Your tea’s spilling,” he woke with a jolt.

“Sorry.” Gersha wiped the liquid from his coverall, got up, and poured two fresh, hot mugs from the thermos. He pressed one into Tilrey’s hand, then rearranged the pillows to support him. “How are you feeling? Do you need to sleep more? Or eat?”

Tilrey took a swallow of tea and grinned ruefully. “This stuff is shit. Malsha had real tea, at least.”

“Malsha?” Tilrey hardly ever used that nickname when they spoke of the exile—which was rarely—but Gersha knew to whom it referred. He stared at Tilrey, bursting with curiosity and trepidation. “You haven’t—you don’t mean—”

“Well, now you know all my secrets.” Tilrey set the mug on the nightstand and lay back. “Yeah, that’s why I was in Placid.”

He went on to explain the mission, while Gersha did his best to nod supportively and not plaster his feelings all over his face. He apparently didn’t succeed, because Tilrey broke off and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just . . .” Gersha wanted to touch Tilrey, to clasp his hand again, but now they were out of the infirmary, he felt shy. “I can’t believe Albertine would send you off like that,” he said, channeling his discomfort into rage. “That man spent years . . . hurting you, and she forces you to go have a tête-à-tête with him when it’s clear he has no serious interest in aiding the Republic. She did pressure you to do it, didn’t she?”

Tilrey shook his head. “It was my choice to go, and I survived, as you can see. I even got some useful information.”

He seemed in good spirits, despite his situation and the injury. But that made Albertine and Int/Sec no less deserving of a ferocious reprimand, and Gersha was frustrated to realize he’d never be able to deliver one. As for “information,” what use was that now?

Tilrey was still talking, off on another track. He wanted to go find the sergeant and his other companion. “They could be holding Gavril in detention, treating him like an enemy combatant—maybe even torturing him for intelligence. I can’t let them do that; he only came here for me. He was planning to desert. He disabled our trackers, for green’s sake!”

He slid to the edge of the bed and, to Gersha’s alarm, swung his legs over. “We need to go _now_.”

“Rishka!” Gersha jumped to his feet and restrained Tilrey, doing his best to maneuver him onto his back again. “I doubt anyone’s being tortured. You can’t walk on that ankle. And we don’t even know where they’re being held.”

“We’ll find out, then.”

Unsettled by the feverish shine of Tilrey’s eyes, Gersha ran a fingertip down his lover’s temple. “Let me take care of it. While you’re asleep, I’ll find Ranek _and_ a pair of crutches, so you can go out first thing tomorrow.”

“That’s not soon enough.” But after a moment Tilrey lay back, the fight leaving him. “Wish I weren’t so useless. Fucking painkillers.”

“It’s not just the drugs—you’ve been through a trauma. You’re exhausted.” And those buckskins Tilrey was wearing, despite clinging to his chest and thighs in a very fetching way, were probably sweat-soaked and uncomfortable. “Do you have sleeping clothes with you?” Gersha asked

He rifled through Tilrey’s pack, which the techs had brought over, and returned to the bed with a T-shirt. Tilrey had his heavy shirt half-off. Gersha tugged it over his head, then turned discreetly away while Tilrey undid the leather trousers and pulled them over his hips.

“Shit, I’m going to have to slit these open to get them over _that_.” Tilrey indicated his injured foot. “I can take the boot off, but my ankle’s swollen underneath. Get me the knife in the front pocket, would you?”

When Gersha returned with the knife, Tilrey reached for it, but Gersha said, “You’re at the wrong angle. Let me.” He took hold of the bunched-up leather and poked the blade into the crudely stitched inseam, trying not to let himself tremble at his sudden proximity to Tilrey’s thigh.

“I’ll need a new pair when we get out of here,” Tilrey muttered.

Gersha refrained from pointing out the concern was moot. _Give him time._ He deconstructed the trouser leg with painstaking slowness, doing his best neither to jab Tilrey nor to touch his bare skin. _Don’t graze his thigh. Don’t look at his groin. Don’t THINK about his thigh or his groin._ But there was something undeniably intimate about peeling away the ruined garment, soft leather from softer skin. Gersha removed the boot, then eased the leather carefully over the swollen, bandaged foot, his stomach fluttering in sympathy.

“There we go,” he said, his face burning as he tossed the split trousers away. “Lucky for you, the damned coveralls we wear should fit over the swelling, or you’d have to go around half-naked.”

“We can’t have that.” Tilrey made the throwaway comment with a self-consciousness that struck Gersha as odd. Since when was he shy about nudity?

Then Gersha glanced over and saw that Tilrey had pulled the T-shirt on, stretching it low over his hips. It failed to conceal the visible swelling in his briefs.

One look at that bulge, and Gersha was achingly hard, too. _Behavioral conditioning. Force of habit,_ he told himself irritably, as Tilrey tugged the blanket hastily over his lap. He was . . . was he blushing?

Tilrey was never the one who blushed. Gersha swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Something flipped over in his belly, a small flame kindling. “Why so modest?” He didn’t mean to say the words; they were just there. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Tilrey didn’t meet his eyes. “Not exactly an appropriate time to be ogling you.”

“You’re ogling _me_?” Gersha laughed out loud.

Then his embarrassment melted into relief. He hadn’t expected this, but it was a good thing—a way to keep Tilrey from fretting about the sergeant, at least for tonight. If they were lucky, Gersha might even send him off into a healing sleep.

He swung his legs up on the bed, grateful that the coverall hid his own arousal. “Lie down.”

Tilrey obeyed. Gersha made as if to pull the blanket evenly over Tilrey’s legs—then, instead, tugged it down to expose the tumescent area. Before Tilrey could react, he cupped his hand over the ripening bulge. “If you don’t want this, tell me now.”

He meant to keep his hand still until he heard an response. But the way Tilrey lurched under it, hips pumping uncontrollably, nixed that plan. Muscle memory took over. Gersha’s hand closed around the pulsing cock in a businesslike grip, making Tilrey gasp and buck again.

“Say yes or no. Please.” He straddled Tilrey’s legs, facing him, careful not to touch the cast.

Tilrey writhed and gasped again, a bit of a moan in it. Rock hard now, he threw his head back on the pillow, his cheeks red and his eyes glazed in the moment before he closed them.

“Of course I want it,” he whispered. “So fucking badly. Right now. But—”

Before he could finish, before he could remind Gersha of all those regrettable, now-irrelevant things that had happened between them, Gersha took action. Without removing the briefs, he bent and slid Tilrey’s cock into the tight envelope of his mouth, tonguing it through the thin synthetic.

“I thought—” Tilrey’s sentence became a long, guttural groan as Gersha took him a little deeper.

The fabric itself didn’t taste good, but the plump outline of the organ, straining against the garment, was enough to make Gersha’s own cock rear rebelliously between his legs. He brought his tongue into play again, soaking the briefs with saliva without relaxing his grip on the base.

Something broke from Tilrey that might have been a sob. “Verdant hells, _please_. But you said—”

He couldn’t start getting agitated when the whole point was to relax him. Gersha popped the cock out of his mouth, propped himself on an elbow, and said sternly, “If you don’t stop talking about things that aren’t here and now, I’m not going to take these off you.” He teased a finger under the waistband of the briefs, stroking the chalky skin of Tilrey’s belly right where the red-gold hair began.

Tilrey actually whimpered. “I’ll shut up.”

Shuddering with his own excitement, Gersha didn’t trust himself to reply. He yanked the elastic up and over the burgeoning organ. For a few seconds he just held it, savoring the throbbing, eager pulse, admiring the length and girth against his hand and the fluid pearling at the tip. He let himself glance up Tilrey’s body—the straining chest, the strong shoulders, the exposed throat, the golden hair catching the last sunlight. Then he bent again and, in one continuous motion, slipped the cock past his tonsils and deep into his throat.

This wasn’t Gersha’s usual procedure. Normally he focused on teasing Tilrey, licking tantalizingly around the tip and down the length, because he didn’t like gagging. Now, though, to his surprise, the passage opened easily, cooperatively to the pressure, as if the long period of deprivation had made it more receptive.

He took Tilrey deeper, his hand leaving the base to play gently with the dimpled scrotum. His reward was a high, desperate sound from Tilrey’s throat, and then a much deeper murmur of “Fuck, _yes_.”

_I want all of you._ Gersha’s own erection was impossibly heavy between his thighs, delicious and agonizing at once, but he resisted the urge to rub it against Tilrey’s knee or thigh. _This is for him, not me._ For a few seconds, he just focused on Tilrey’s length in his throat, occupying the soft, intimate place, filling him to bursting. Then he drew back and began to move.

Typically Tilrey didn’t make much noise, reserved even in his arousal, but the exhaustion or the injury or the drugs had lowered his inhibitions. He groaned and writhed helplessly, clutching the sheets till his knuckles whitened. His hands slipped lower and knotted themselves furiously in Gersha’s hair, forcing his head down until Gersha gagged at last, squirming involuntarily.

“Oh green hells, sorry.” The hands released him. “Can’t—so close.”

Gersha knew; he could feel that closeness in every salty spurt he swallowed. He reached up blindly and grabbed Tilrey’s hand, his thumb pressing the palm.

As Tilrey came, Gersha drew out again—but just enough to swallow properly, over and over and over. Sometimes he got fastidious about that, but right now he had no scruples; he wanted it all inside him. _Take me, turn me inside out, change me_. . . but Tilrey already had changed him, hadn’t he? Or something had.

When Tilrey had spent himself, Gersha cleaned the softening cock with his tongue, laving the head and shaft tenderly before tucking it back in the briefs. Then he drew the blanket over Tilrey, covering him to the neck, and lay down beside him, not quite touching.

He had things to do, but first he’d make sure Tilrey was fast asleep. And there was the little matter of his own arousal needing time to subside. Now wasn’t the time to ask for reciprocation.

After a few minutes, Tilrey wrapped an arm around Gersha and pulled him into that familiar space against his side. Gersha knew he shouldn’t get comfortable. But he’d missed this too much—being tucked in close, protected, with his cheek against Tilrey’s rising and falling chest. Thin fabric rode up to reveal velvety skin, bristles of sparse hair. He relaxed into it, letting his breathing fall into sync with his lover’s— _because yes, that’s what he is, everything else be damned_.

A large hand played with his hair. Gersha made a faint humming sound against the T-shirt, a purr of gratification. “I’ll go in a minute,” he said, lest Tilrey think he was settled in for good. “To see to your sergeant.”

Tilrey’s voice was sleepy. “You don’t make any sense. You didn’t want me before—”

“In the Duke’s palace? You were drunk, Rishka.” Gersha remembered how strange and desperate Tilrey had been, trying to act like a kettle boy again. “I don’t think you really wanted me that night, either.”

“No, but before, love.” Tilrey’s voice hitched toward a sob. “That night in Redda. The second you found out, you pushed me away like I was rabble. Street trash. You started talking about dirty shirkers wanting to slit your throat like common criminals.”

“Shh. Shh.” Gersha tugged the shirt up farther and stroked Tilrey’s chest, teasing his thumb around a nipple. “That was a long time ago.” He wasn’t sure it had been even a month, yet it felt like years. “Everything’s changed,” he murmured. “How can I call anyone a dirty shirker? Whatever I thought you were then, we’re the same now.”

“But you didn’t _choose_ to come here, Gersha.” Tilrey’s fingers rubbed the knob of his shoulder. “You came chasing me. They’re keeping you prisoner, aren’t they?”

The words didn’t make sense anymore. Gersha would never feel like a prisoner in the Southern Hearth again. He reached up to trace Tilrey’s jawline, trying to distract him from a subject they weren’t ready for. “You need a shave. I like how your beard comes in almost red. Don’t get rid of it till I have a chance to kiss you properly.”

“You’re trying to distract me.”

Judging by the drowsy, contented note in Tilrey’s voice, it was working. “We can debate ideology later,” Gersha promised. “The important thing is, I’m here now. I’m . . . okay with being here. I know no one’s going to slit my throat for being an Upstart, least of all you.”

He’d imagined such horrors back in Redda, throwing them in Tilrey’s face, but now he wondered what he’d been thinking. Those hysterical scenarios of bloodthirsty Dissidents were his uncle’s, not his own. Ranek, Celinda, Ulka, the teenagers at the wall, even the obnoxious council members who side-eyed him—they were all people with arguably well-grounded grievances against the Republic, not monsters.

Tilrey wasn’t a monster. How had Gersha ever doubted that? He had a dim, hideous memory of kissing Tilrey in his office to prove to himself that it could never be the same now. And Tilrey had kissed him back, his mouth warm and wet, and Gersha had pushed him away, and—

He’d done worse since. He had three men’s lives on his conscience. But he’d do anything to take back that particular moment.

He brushed his thumb across Tilrey’s lips, pleased by the gradual relaxation of his lover’s breathing. “I love you, sweetheart,” he said in an even, lulling voice. “After I sent you away, in Redda, I could barely sleep, eat, anything. I was in a nightmare. But now I’m very much awake, and I’m never letting you go.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, this story earns its explicit rating! ;) If you're still with me after that looooong separation and dry spell, thank you, and I hope the reunion feels earned! Our boys still have some issues to work out, but they're getting closer to being on the same page. :)


	23. A Prison Within a Prison

Knocking on the door of Ranek’s apartment produced no response. Where was the detention area? The constables’ barracks, even? Gersha had no idea. But he’d told Tilrey he’d check on Sergeant Ardaly and report back, and he couldn’t let him down.

It hadn’t been easy leaving his own room, even with the assurance that Tilrey was sleeping peacefully in his bed. Gersha could still taste him, but it wasn’t enough—he wanted to hold him all night, to lie beside him and watch him breathe. It had been way, way too long.

Downstairs in the building’s common room, Ulka and Katrine were playing five-square over herbal tea. Ulka called him over. “Hey, Gersha! Want to take a corner?”

Touched by the invitation, Gersha shook his head. “Thanks, but I need to find Ranek right now. It’s about, uh, that security breach that happened this afternoon.”

The spouses exchanged wary glances. Ulka said, “I can message him for you, but he’s working, and he won’t want to be disturbed.”

Working? At ten at night? Then Gersha remembered that in Oslov, Ranek had been an interrogator. And interrogators worked all hours.

Maybe Tilrey’s friend the sergeant wasn’t being cooperative.

The thought sent a shock wave through Gersha’s system. He drummed his fingers urgently on the table, trying to think of something that would force Ranek to interrupt his work. At home, getting his friend’s ear would never have been a problem, but he had no illusions about his relative rank in the Hearth’s hierarchy—and, whatever they said, there _had_ to be a hierarchy here.

When the solution popped into his brain, he hesitated only for an instant. “Tell Ranek I’ve thought about the favor that Celinda asked me for. Tell him I’m ready to help him out, _if_ he’ll let me see the new detainees.”

Ulka and Katrine exchanged glances. Katrine looked confused, Ulka less so as she said, “Wait here.”

Gersha said, “And tell him it has to be tonight.”

Ranek must have understood. Ten minutes later, a squat electric vehicle rumbled to a stop where Gersha waited in front of the building. A black-clad driver beckoned to him. “Fir Egil says you’re to come with us.”

The detention facility was underground, accessed through a bulkhead in a supply shack. That was all Gersha learned, because the two officers insisted on blindfolding him until they were nearly inside. “For your own protection,” said a woman who sounded like the one who’d tackled him earlier today.

Gersha let them do it, but he couldn’t resist asking, “Is that why you wear those helmets? For your own protection, so your friends and neighbors won’t recognize you when you arrest them?”

“Yes,” the officer said as if she hadn’t heard the sarcasm.

So this was how it felt to be on the wrong side of the law, or at least not positively on its right side. Gersha felt punchy, like those teens he’d met at the wall, as the two officers led him down concrete steps into a musty gloom.

There he found more concrete and hissing fluorescents. Corridors radiated from a hub filled with desks and computer screens. It was like a mini Int/Sec, and he wondered if they had their own version of the Blinding Tank, the room full of monitors that recorded virtually everything happening in Redda. Green hells, he should check for cameras in his room.

Ranek rose from a desk where he’d been watching a screen. “Gersha!” he said with strained pleasantness. “I’m so happy you’ve decided to assist us. To what do we owe the honor?”

Gersha didn’t feel like pretending. “I’ve come here to get Sergeant Ardaly released. And his companion, if you’ve got him here.”

Ranek shot a sidelong glance at his fellow desk workers—just two of them at this hour. “Ceilis, will you keep an eye on Quadrant F? I want to know when No. 65 comes home.”

“Of course, Fir Egil,” said a woman tonelessly.

Without another word, Ranek led Gersha down a high-roofed passage lined with closed doors. Each room had a video monitor, and some had large panes of one-way glass through which he caught glimpses of people crouched in corners or pacing back and forth. _Cells._

“So Dissidence has its own Dissidents,” he said. “This is Int/Sec, and you’re the director, aren’t you?”

“Every society needs someone to keep the peace.”

_You didn’t answer my question._ Gersha gestured at the cells. “What do you do with these people when you can’t rehab them? Exile them to the forest?”

“We have very few detainees, and most are common criminals. Dissent’s rare.” Ranek stopped before a wide glass pane. The cell inside was pitch-dark. The monitor showed a night-vision view of a big man slumped against the far wall, his legs splayed and his head hanging. “There’s your sergeant. As you can see, he’s fine. We’re familiar with his companion, and there’s nothing we can learn from him, so we have him in a lower-security area.”

“What are you trying to learn from Sergeant Ardaly?” Gersha drew himself up and tried to look like a Councillor. “Unless he can get over that wall, he’s no threat to you.”

Ranek stood motionless, his dark coverall fading into the drabness of the walls. “Actually, he could cause all kinds of trouble if we let him into the general population. He’s a hazard and a pest, and Tilrey should never have brought him.” Before Gersha could protest, he went on, “I know why you’re here. But you aren’t being objective, Gersha, and if Tilrey weren’t high on painkillers right now, I think he’d agree with me. This man could be a treasure trove of data on troop movements and supply depots. We need everything we can get.”

Gersha couldn’t deny the logic, but it made cold creep down his spine. “Ardaly’s only a sergeant,” he countered. “Tilrey says he’s already half defected himself. He disabled both their trackers, which is an act of sabotage under Oslov law—potential grounds for exile.”

Ranek arched a brow. “Then the man’s being obtuse. If he’s already a traitor, his only hope is to cooperate with us. Yet he refuses to say a word.”

“I’m sure he _is_ being obtuse.” Gersha remembered how he’d seen Tilrey and Ardaly traipsing across the Duke’s garden together and imagined they were lovers. _He_ was the obtuse one. “Or he’s just proud. It’s not easy to admit to yourself you’re betraying your homeland.”

Ranek checked something on his handheld. “I don’t think you came here to waste my time discussing this grunt’s psychology, Gersha. You’ve told me what you want. Now, what precisely are you offering?”

So it came down to this. Gersha had to force himself to meet his friend’s eyes. “Show me your intercepted transmissions from Colonel Thibault. I’ll do what I can to decode them.”

His mouth contorted around the bitter words. He’d hoped never to assist actively in treason, and here he was, doing it practically at the first opportunity. But Celinda had a point—decoding the transmissions might save lives here. And he didn’t like the hopeless way Tilrey’s friend was slumped against the wall.

Granted, no one was hurting Ardaly—yet—but Gersha’s rudimentary Int/Sec training told him Ranek was using isolation and light deprivation to break the prisoner down. After a day or so, he might start barking questions through an intercom. Then they’d transfer the sergeant to a smaller, less comfortable cell—the size of a closet, or even a coffin. There were many ways to torture without breaking the skin.

Gersha forced himself to keep gazing at the eerie green monitor. “And in return for my assistance, you’ll allow Sergeant Ardaly to share a minimum-security cell with his companion. You’ll postpone the interrogation. With any luck, decent treatment will inspire him to cooperate of his own free will.” He added before he could stop himself, “Isn’t the whole point of this place _not_ to do things the way we did at home?”

Pointedly ignoring the question, Ranek held up five fingers. “That’s how many transmissions you’ll decode for me. Right now, tonight. After that, your friend gets transferred.”

Gersha shook his head. _Never take someone’s first offer,_ Tilrey had tutored him. _It shows weakness._ “Not five to start with. Three and you transfer him. Then I’ll do three more.”

For a moment, Ranek looked like he might object. Then, with a shrug, he led Gersha back up the corridor. “Fine.”

The job took most of the night. Colonel Thibault had her own private lexicon of codes and memes, which she shared only with her closest courtiers and allies. Gersha’s previous experience decoding that lexicon for Int/Sec gave him a significant leg up, but without access to his database, he had to do some guessing.

Once he’d finished four transmissions—the longest taking nearly two hours—he insisted on meeting Ardaly in his new cell. By that time, his eyelids seemed to be made of sandpaper, and he couldn’t stop yawning.

The officer opened the cell to reveal Sergeant Ardaly and his friend sitting on a mattress pad. Ardaly’s head rested in the other man’s lap, their posture intimate in a way Gersha knew well. Tilrey hadn’t mentioned they were lovers, had he?

The handsome, dark-haired young man, whose name Gersha couldn’t recall, looked up fiercely. “Go away, Fir. He needs to rest.”

But Ardaly struggled upright, keeping hold of his friend’s hand. “Are you a traitor now, Fir?” he demanded hoarsely of Gersha. “Are you going to hurt Tilrey? Because he came here to fucking save you.”

The force of the sergeant’s anger made Gersha back toward the door. He was glad Ranek hadn’t come along to witness this—though he was probably watching on one of his monitors.

“I don’t actually need saving, Sergeant,” Gersha said, “and neither does Tilrey, not now. He’s safe and sleeping. I wanted to thank you for taking such good care of him on the way here. He wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Ardaly grimaced, then pressed his friend’s hand to his chest. “Krisha did most of it. Took care of us both. Tilrey’s not locked up?”

Gersha shook his head. “I also want to apologize for the treatment you’ve received here. It’s not worthy of this place.”

Ardaly shrugged. “They’re traitors. Wouldn’t expect them to welcome me with open arms. Where is Tilrey, then?”

Ardaly must not know about Tilrey’s prior relationship with the True Hearth. That wasn’t Gersha’s secret to tell, so he said only, “From what he tells me, you’re planning to desert. That makes you a traitor, too.”

Ardaly’s eyes flashed. “Not the same thing.”

The other man, Krisha, said softly, “It ain’t that different, Gavril.”

“Fuck yeah, it is. If you’d been born an Oslov, you’d understand.” Ardaly caressed Krisha’s hand as if to mitigate the harsh words. “I need to get away from Oslov, but I’m not _against_ Oslov. These clowns are.”

The conversation was going downhill, and Gersha was too exhausted to turn it around. He’d have to leave changing Ardaly’s mind to Tilrey. “I’ll make sure Fir Bronn visits you tomorrow, sergeant,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can to secure your release—but your cooperation would help.”

Ardaly’s words came in a snarl: “Tell the shirkers I’ll cooperate when _they_ decide to turn themselves in.”

As Gersha turned to go, wondering if his treasonous labor was all for nothing, Krisha caught his eye and gave him a curt nod, as if to say, _Don’t worry about it_ or _We’ll bring him around._ Or maybe that was just wishful thinking, Gersha considered as he returned toward the hub. Maybe the nod only meant _You’re fucked._

Preoccupied, he nearly bumped into an officer who was leading a small, cuffed figure down the corridor. As they passed, Gersha did a double take and wheeled.

The prisoner was the teenage graffiti artist he’d met at the wall, with her messy dark ponytail. Her calm gray eyes caught his, and Gersha thought he saw a look of weary, jaded betrayal in them, as if she wasn’t surprised to see him here but wasn’t happy about it, either.

He opened his mouth to order the officer to stop, to uncuff the girl and let her go—then remembered where and who he was. Closed his mouth and watched as the officer opened a cell. “What are you looking at?” the officer asked, and Gersha ducked his head and continued on his way.

Back at Ranek’s desk, he said, “I want you to release that girl. The one you just brought in for vandalism.”

Ranek’s eyes slitted. He didn’t look tired at all. “You still owe us two transmissions, Gersha. It’s no time to make demands.”

Gersha pulled the print-out toward him, though the words on it were swimming. “She shouldn’t be here. What are you going to do to her?”

“We don’t hurt children. But we need the names of her friends. She’s a repeat offender, and she’s starting to have an influence.”

Gersha’s pen stabbed the paper. “Is telling the truth an offense? Living inside a wall _is_ like being buried alive. I mean, to a kid,” he added almost apologetically.

Ranek’s mouth hardened. “That’s why we don’t intend to live inside this wall forever.”

“Right, right. You’re going to return to Oslov and take over.” He couldn’t see Celinda’s boast as anything but a boast. “How do you think it feels to a sixteen-year-old, though, being cooped up here?”

“You tell me, Gersha—how’d it feel to you? Redda may not have literal walls, but we couldn’t just _leave_ any more than we can here. Maybe you didn’t mind that when we were kids, but I did.”

The Wastes were death. Redda was safety. Gersha had never thought of his home as a walled city or a prison before, but now he saw what Ranek meant. He remembered how moody and restless the younger Ranek had sometimes been. “Was that your problem? You never told me.”

“No, and I never told you I was a shirker, either, did I? There are some things you can’t confess to your closest friends in Oslov.”

Gersha wanted to say, _You should have trusted me,_ but he wasn’t sure it would be true. If teenage Gersha had known Ranek was having seditious thoughts, he might have reported him.

To cover that guilty realization, he said, “So you grew up and became an interrogator, punishing people for daring to think outside the walls. And now you’re still doing it. Even here.”

Ranek’s face was calm, but the set of his jaw was ominous. “You’re new here, Gersha. You don’t understand what it means to build a community from scratch. So I’ll let that slide.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this was the first half of a huuuuge chapter with the second half from Tilrey's POV, but I decided it was best to split them up. Suffice it to say the next chapter will return to fun activities in Gersha's room. ;) I'm planning to end this thing in 30 chapters or slightly less. Thanks for reading! <3


	24. Equals

When Tilrey woke up, he was alone in bed. The glare through the blinds told him the sun was already high in the sky.

Gersha had left two painkillers and a glass of water on the nightstand, but the throbbing in Tilrey’s ankle was manageable, and he didn’t want that fuzzy, disengaged feeling today. When Gersha came back, he’d ask for something less potent.

_Potent._ As he sat up, yesterday evening came back in a rush of remembered sensations. Gersha’s tongue through the briefs, wet and supple, strange and familiar at once. The heat of his tight, eager throat—

Tilrey’s cock hardened again, pressing against the fabric. _No time for that._ He had to talk to Egil and make sure Gavril wasn’t stashed in a cell somewhere.

He swung his legs to the floor, his head swimming. Put his weight on his good foot, then pressed experimentally on his bad one. _Ow, fuck._ But the wheelchair was close enough to hop to. He settled himself in it and draped a blanket over his embarrassingly exposed groin.

From there it was a short trip down the hall to the shared bathroom, which Gersha had shown him last night. Imagine proud Gersha using a collective bathroom! And taking orders from Egil!

True, last night Gersha had been surprisingly even-tempered, not to mention, well, flexible. As Tilrey wheeled himself back to the bedroom, a blush spread over his face at the memory. Despite his best efforts to keep himself on track, he couldn’t quell the stubborn erection. Gersha had never been so abandoned with his mouth before.

Of course, all that might be down to the shock of the reunion and the injury. People changed, but not that much. Soon enough the Councillor would be fuming and fretting about his dignity again. Malsha had advised Tilrey to treat Gersha like an equal, and last night Gersha had said, _We’re the same now_ , but how could they ever be the same?

Before he could touch it, the door swung open to reveal Gersha in the flesh, looking pale and keyed up. “Where were you?” he asked sharply.

“Didn’t want to piss out the window.” Gersha was bossing him around again already, but at least he’d brought a pair of crutches. For a moment, Tilrey considered grabbing them and going in search of Egil right now. But his muscles protested, and his head spun, and he was grateful when Gersha helped him back into bed.

“You don’t need to watch me every second I’m awake,” he said. “I won’t run off. Where’ve you been, anyway?” Gersha had gray bags under his bloodshot eyes, and his coverall emitted the faintest sour odor. “Haven’t you slept?”

Gersha didn’t meet Tilrey’s eyes as he adjusted the pillows. “I was checking on your friends. No need to worry about them—they’re fine, and they’re together.”

_Thank everything green._ Tilrey relaxed backward and let his eyes close—but a moment later, they popped open again. “Are they in detention? I need to go talk to Egil, to explain—”

“Shh. It can wait.” Gersha settled on the mattress. Gentle fingers stroked Tilrey’s face, took hold of his chin. “Egil’s catching up on his sleep. So are Gavril and Krisha. And you need some breakfast.”

“I don’t, I—” Then Gersha kissed him, and Tilrey couldn’t remember what he’d been about to say.

The kiss started out timid and tentative, with Gersha flinching and advancing, trying first one angle and then another, as if Tilrey might break. Very quickly, though, Tilrey had had enough of that. He got a firm grip on Gersha’s shoulders, buried one hand in his hair, and devoured the soft mouth, probing it deeply with his tongue.

After an instant of tension, Gersha’s body melted against his. Without opening his eyes, Tilrey let his free hand fall from Gersha’s shoulder to his hip. From there, it was an easy path to his groin.

Already hard, Gersha gasped and caught hold of Tilrey’s wrist, capturing the errant hand. “You need to rest.”

Tilrey opened his eyes into the sea-green ones. It all felt good, too good, but Gersha was right that this wasn’t the time. “No. I need to see Egil. Gersha, this is my tenth day since leaving Bettevy. My tracker’s been disabled, and so has Gavril’s. Albertine’s going to assume something happened to us. If we’re not back soon, she may start a search.”

“Let her. The Southern Hearth was built with camouflage in mind.”

Why was Gersha being so naïve? “This is Oslov, Gersha. Once they’re actually _looking_ for something, they’ll find it. But if we’re back in a few days, she won’t have to start searching at all. We just have to get it through Egil’s paranoid head that it’s safe to let us leave.” He stopped as he saw what Gersha was holding—a safety razor. “Really? Now?”

“Really.” Gersha had a slight twinkle in his eye. “I’ve kissed you, so now I’m going to fetch soap and water and shave you. Just as I threatened last night.”

“I don’t remember that.” Tilrey waited while Gersha slipped out and returned with a small basin. He didn’t protest when Gersha sat down and began to pat soapy water onto his three-day growth of beard. But he did resume the argument: “We can’t let Oslov discover this place.”

“And we won’t, love. Now, hold still, please.” Pinching Tilrey’s chin between thumb and forefinger, Gersha turned his head, picked up the razor, and shaved a careful swath down his cheek. “Oh yes,” he murmured, “much better. These people may be shirkers, but they aren’t shaggy-bearded Outers. We need you to be presentable, my love.”

The distraction was frustrating. But the warm water was soothing, and Gersha wielded the razor like a tickling caress. Tilrey closed his eyes and relaxed into it, letting himself be prodded and turned. “Since when have you cared about being presentable for shirkers? Or about anything but dumping them in cells, for that matter?”

Gersha started in on his chin. “I didn’t dump you in a cell when I found out.”

“No.” It hurt even to remember, so Tilrey concentrated on not moving. “Tell me more about Gavril and Krisha. Don’t censor anything for me. Where are they, and how’d you get to them? Does Egil trust you?

Gersha tipped him to the left. “If I tell you everything, will you promise to stay still so I don’t cut you? And not run off and try to pull Ranek out of bed?”

“That depends on what you say.” But Tilrey did hold still as Gersha told him where he’d found Gavril last night and how he’d obtained the sergeant’s transfer to a better situation.

By the time the story was finished, he was clean-shaven. He reached up to run fingers over his smooth cheeks and chin as he tried to absorb what seemed impossible. “But decoding those transmissions is treason.”

Gersha arched a brow, looking almost amused. “Coming to Resurgence to find you was treason. Entering this settlement was treason.”

“Not on the same level.” How could Gersha not see that?

“I know you still look at me and see a Councillor, but that part of me is gone, Rishka. I can’t go back. I’ve made my peace with that.”

Tilrey knotted his hand in Gersha’s curls and tugged the man’s face close, looking for signs of deceit or withholding in those clear eyes. Then he had another idea, and his gaze flew upward, around the edges of the room, taking note of the light fixtures. “Are they surveilling us?” he whispered.

Gersha shook his head. “I checked while you were out.” He shifted so he was practically in Tilrey’s lap, his knee in a position that made Tilrey’s cock swell again, and touched his cheek. “You need to relax.”

But Tilrey couldn’t relax. Despite everything he himself had done for the True Hearth, he was shocked by the idea of Gersha buying Gavril’s safety at such a price. “Coming here is one thing, but when you actively help these people, you cross a line.” He remembered exactly when he’d crossed that line himself: when he delivered the coordinates of the settlement to the True Hearth in Thurskein. He’d done it for his mom, for Dal, for all of them. “Why, Gersha? What made you do it?”

Tilrey knew far too well how it felt to be imprisoned, isolated, and broken down to the point where you’d embrace your captor like a lover. But Gersha had only been here a few days. He appeared to be under no physical or mental coercion. Or was Tilrey missing something?

“They haven’t hurt you or locked you up, have they, love?” he asked, his thumb stroking Gersha’s own unshaven cheek. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Gersha reddened, but didn’t pull away. “No! They treat me like a colleague. Until I saw the detention block last night, I didn’t even know people got locked up here.” The green eyes focused on Tilrey’s again, gentle but firm. “I’m not sure why you’re making me explain myself, considering. But . . . well, the sergeant and Krisha are your friends. And this place is my home, and your home, and theirs.”

As Gersha spoke, his voice dropped to a near-whisper, and his eyes lowered, the long lashes brushing his cheek. Something swelled up through Tilrey’s chest and caught in his throat. Gersha had sacrificed his honor, his high-Upstart integrity, for a man he barely knew. And he’d done it to make Tilrey happy.

Something was still swelling between Tilrey’s legs, too, and _fuck it_. All this talk was getting them nowhere. Maybe if he made Gersha come the way he should’ve last night, he’d get more frankness from him. Or maybe that was just an excuse. But his chest was still swelling with a warmth he couldn’t contain, and he might start weeping like a child if he couldn’t get closer, couldn’t get Gersha inside him.

He pulled Gersha down on top of him and rutted up against his hip, one hand still in his hair, both their bodies tense and eager. When Gersha hardened, Tilrey grabbed hold and stroked him quickly to a state of aching readiness.

Gersha moaned and arched his back. Then he buried his face in Tilrey’s neck and sucked it wetly, grazing it with his teeth, pausing only to whisper, “I want you.”

“Have me, then.” Tilrey sat up just enough to tug off his briefs. He lay down again, carrying Gersha with him, and rolled backward, knees to chest, exposing himself. He was careful of his ankle, but its faint throb was no distraction from the engorged need between his legs. “Got any lube?”

“I think so.” Gersha scrambled off him and rummaged in the nightstand. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I should be the one—”

“No, sweetheart, no. Yesterday was perfect. Now I want you to fuck me—and not the sweet and tender way, either.”

He tugged Gersha back down on top of him and kissed his lover’s throat, stroking Gersha’s cock with the other hand. More words came unbidden to his lips: “I want you to fuck me like you did right after I taught you how to fuck me, all those years ago when I first belonged to you. Like you’re starving and I’m a five-course dinner. Do it hard. Hold me down.” He ran a finger over Gersha’s lips, which opened and took him in. “Don’t think about my pleasure. Make me feel you balls-deep. Make me feel you tomorrow.”

The words were making Gersha buck helplessly against Tilrey’s hip. When he reached for the lube, his trembling hands dropped it.

“No worries, sweetheart.” Tilrey snatched the tube and eased himself backward and Gersha to one side. Knees in the air, he worked a slick finger into himself, then two, doing it with the brisk efficiency he’d learned from servicing men who had no interest in making it good for him.

He’d used similar dirty talk on some of those men, but this was different—he meant it. Before he went back to thinking for both of them—because someone had to get them out of this mess—he wanted to surrender control for a while, wanted to be used. With a deliciously wanton shiver, he tossed the tube away and rolled his spine to hook his knees over Gersha’s shoulders.

The first, abortive jab of Gersha’s cock made all Tilrey’s senses white out for a second. When he spoke again, it was in a growl: “I’m not walking you through this. I’m an invalid, for fuck’s sake. Take charge. Take me.”

For an instant, Gersha looked ready to protest. Then his eyes filmed over and his pupils bloomed. With a moan, he grabbed hold of Tilrey’s hands, pressed them together above his head, and thrust into him.

It was a quick, wild ride—or maybe a long one; Tilrey lost all sense of time. At first, Gersha’s thrusts were deep, heedless, and brutal, just as he’d demanded. Just as they’d been in their first months together, when Gersha first discovered how good it felt to claim someone with utter selfishness.

Then Gersha drew back a little, as if remembering himself. He seized hold of Tilrey’s cock with one hand, still pinning his wrists above his head with the other, and angled his thrusts in that way that made Tilrey writhe and keen under him.

“Harder,” Tilrey whispered when he was able to speak again.

Head thrown back and eyes slitted, he remembered when he’d last made a similar request—in his dorm room in Redda, being fucked by that gruff, sweet engineer. He’d been so desperate to forget Gersha’s rejection. He hadn’t even wanted pleasure then, just punishment, though any intense sensation would do.

The memory hovered in his head for an instant, evanescent as the light on the walls, and vanished. Gersha was here inside him, filling him. The pressure of his hand around Tilrey’s cock was teasing, then crushing, then unbearable—and just when Tilrey thought he’d burst from it, he came, rutting up into the grip, driving Gersha deeper into him.

Gersha stopped moving for a few seconds, letting him ride it out. When Tilrey went lax at last, he released his hands and began to fuck him again in deep, slow, intimate strokes, burying his head against Tilrey’s collarbone, moaning a little each time his cock drove home. He came at last with a long, shuddering cry, his back arching, and pulled out and curled himself up on Tilrey’s chest.

Tilrey rolled on his side, savoring the stretch in his martyred thigh muscles, and drew Gersha into his arms. Gersha was still dressed in that stupid coverall, and Tilrey wanted to peel it off him, but his own body felt waterlogged. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open as he pressed his lover against him, dimly conscious of the warm seed leaking down his thighs.

“That’s exactly what I wanted,” he said.

A hard fuck was something he’d often craved in Redda, but Gersha had usually pulled back, reluctant. Maybe here, where no kettle boys existed and no Levels separated them, it was different.

_Be his equal_ , Malsha had suggested, but the whole visit had brought home for Tilrey that you couldn’t erase the past. If Gersha imagined they could ever be at the same level, in any sense of the word, he was dreaming. Yet being here seemed to have set something free in him.

Maybe he _liked_ it.

And then, at last, Tilrey’s pleasure-slowed brain reran the last thing Gersha had said before the tide of need carried them both away: _This place is my home, and your home, and theirs._

“You don’t just think we _can’t_ leave here,” he murmured into Gersha’s neck. “You don’t _want_ to leave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No worries, Tilrey will face off with Egil. But first, I wanted a little more fun. :) Thanks for reading!


	25. At His Command

“You’re a shirker, Tilrey Bronn,” Gavril said.

He was pacing the length of the cell, arms crossed and eyes bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He skirted the mattress pad, where Krisha lay with his back to them and a blanket pulled over his head, seemingly dead to the world. He stalked back to Tilrey. “You told me this was all for Gersha. But you’ve been one of _them_ the whole time, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” Tilrey didn’t like wearing the coverall that Gersha had given him. It made him feel anonymous and—though he supposed this was hypocritical—a little demeaned after years in the jerkin that connoted his high-Laborer status.

He made up for it by holding his head high. “I don’t have time to defend my beliefs or allegiances to you, Gavril. No one’s asking you to join the revolution. What I _do_ need is your solemn promise to leave here, return to Placid with Krisha—like you were already planning to do, right?—and keep your mouth shut about everything you’ve seen here.”

The sergeant snorted. “Solemn promise? That’s gonna go over real well with your Fir Egil. He wants to put me through the wringer till I betray the Republic, too. Which will never happen.” He stopped to fix Tilrey with a dramatic stare, every feature on his handsome face conveying martyrdom. “He’ll never let me leave here alive.”

“Well, in that case, you’ve got nothing to lose, do you? Why not give my way a try?”

“Because _principles_ ,” Gavril spat, and began pacing again. “You may not care about betraying Oslov, but I do.”

“I care a lot about Oslov.” Gersha had warned Tilrey that Gavril would be stubborn. “But what if I told you we’re not betraying it, just making it truer to the principles you care so much about?”

Gavril shook his head, muttering something that sounded like _shirker bullshit._ “We’re Drudges. Not my business or yours to decide how Oslov should be.”

“Maybe not. But wouldn’t you like a version of Oslov where Krisha could come home and live with you, so you wouldn’t have to stay here for him?”

At this point, Krisha rolled over and popped his head out of the blanket. “Wouldn’t go back to Oslov if I could,” he announced. “Fuck that cold. I’m going to inherit a house here.”

“Right, right.” Tilrey returned his eyes to Gavril. Without the sergeant’s cooperation, he’d never be able to make his case to Egil. “Sergeant, you’ve served Oslov faithfully all your life. Wouldn’t you like it to do something for _you_ for a change?”

“Shut your trap for a second. Blah blah blah, all day long, both of you.” Krisha sat up and propped his elbows on his knees, glaring at them both. “This is the stupidest argument I ever heard. Gavi, just tell the head shirker what he needs to hear. If he wants intel, give it to him. Whatever it takes for him to let us out of this mess.”

Gavril turned a scathing blue gaze on his lover. “I could never betray my brothers- and sisters-in-arms.”

Tilrey cleared his throat. “You’d be surprised how many of those brothers and sisters are already with us.”

They both ignored him, Krisha throwing Gavril’s belligerent gaze right back at him. “So you won’t betray a single precious Oslov soldier, but you want to betray _me_?”

“The shirkers won’t hurt you. It’s me they want.”

“Nah. But I—I—” Krisha opened his mouth, then stopped.

“You what?” Gavril looked murderous.

After a quick glance at Tilrey, Krisha started again: “I want—” He moved his mouth this time, but no words came out.

Tilrey caught his eye, understanding. “Tell him, Krisha.”

“Tell me what?”

At last the words broke from Krisha in a flood: “I don’t want you to die here because of your stupid fucking loyalty! I want you to come back and live with me.”

He eyed Gavril as if expecting a rebuke, shoulders hunched and head lowered, but Gavril just stared sullenly at the wall. Krisha went on, speeding up: “I want Fir Linnett to die, and then the house will be all ours. We’ll take his bedroom with the feather bed. I’ll tend the stables, maybe raise horses for sale, and you can do whatever you want. Maybe you can learn to cook like Jack. Or we can hire him to stay and cook for us, if he’s not too rich from his own inheritance. Whatever. But I want to sleep with you every night, and I never want you to touch anybody but me, and I want you to stop going on about stupid fucking Oslov. Oslov can never suck your cock like I do. It’s just snow and ice and a bunch of pretentious dicks in tunics getting buzzed on sap and making stupid rules. It’s not worth anybody dying for, ’specially you because I love you, and if you try to do something that stupid, I’ll kill you myself.”

Out of breath, sweat beading on his brow, Krisha halted and swiped his face with his sleeve. “That’s what I want.”

After a long moment, Gavril muttered, “You could’ve just said.” There was a new note in his voice, a distinct hint of capitulation.

Tilrey rose to his feet. Nothing he could say would be a tenth as persuasive as what they’d just heard. “Well, Sergeant? Are you still determined to play the martyr?”

***

Gersha bristled at the sight of two officers helping Tilrey out of the little ground-car. He sped across the grass and tried to offer his shoulder, but Tilrey was already making good progress on the crutches.

“I want to see Egil next,” he said, shaking off Gersha’s hands as the car purred back down the road. “I asked them to take me to him, but they said I’d have to walk because it wasn’t ‘official police business.’ It’s as bad as Redda here!”

“I don’t know where Ranek is, but we’ll see him at dinner. You need to sit down now, love, you’re pale. Come. Come.”

With much coaxing and fussing, Gersha got Tilrey over to a bench under a wide maple, where he settled them both and offered some water. Tilrey did look pale, but a feverish flush appeared on his cheeks as he waved the canteen away and said, “Gavril’s going to cooperate. He’ll go back to Placid with Krisha and disappear there. We’ll tell Albertine he was killed when the Rogues attacked us on the road. I’ll work out a good story, trust me. We can tell her the truth about you hacking my tracker. You thought I was defecting, so you came after me—irresponsible, but you’re infatuated with me, and you’re allowed one slip-up. Eventually you caught up with me on my way back from Malsha’s, and—”

“Rishka, please.” Gersha had been busy propping the crutches more stably against the tree. Now he wound an arm around Tilrey’s waist and turned him so they faced each other. “Don’t overstrain yourself. We’ve got time to work these things out.”

“But we don’t.” Tilrey’s eyes were febrile. “Every day we’re away, Albertine gets more suspicious. We can say the Rogues chased us deep into the woods, and that’s how I got hurt. But the Duke’s guardsmen have no reason to back us up. We could bribe them—”

“Actually, the guardsmen might very well back us up, if the Duke instructs them to.” Gersha repeated what Ranek had told him about the secret communications between Duke Dalziel and the True Hearth. It felt good to have knowledge that Tilrey would find of use, even if they never actually needed to use it.

Tilrey listened intently, relaxing a little against Gersha’s arm. “No wonder Duke Dalziel doesn’t want a garrison of Oslov soldiers in Bettevy. He’s playing a dangerous game, trading with us and selling secrets to our enemy.”

“ _Our_ enemy?” Gersha didn’t hold back an incredulous laugh. “Sweetheart, _we_ are the enemy.”

“You know what I mean.” Tilrey looked straight at him, those bright eyes narrowing. “You’ve only been here for what, a few days? How did you change your allegiance all of a sudden, Fir Councillor? I keep wondering if they’ve drugged you.”

Gersha dropped his eyes. “Don’t call me that. It’s not who I am.”

“How do you become another person so quickly, though?” Tilrey stroked Gersha’s knee, making his skin prickle through the coverall. “When we got here, you were afraid even to step outside. Now you don’t want to go home?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Gersha said.

He hadn’t told Tilrey yet about being kept in a swinging cage and pelted with pebbles, about learning to be likable, about watching men bleed out and being sure he was the next to die. Safe inside these walls, wearing this ugly coverall, he might as well have died in the forest and been reborn—as an Oslov, but a better kind of Oslov. One who’d given up his old, imprisoning privileges in exchange for new, intoxicating freedoms that he could enjoy with the person he adored most in the world.

He cupped his hand over Tilrey’s and faced him again, tears clouding his vision. “Why would I want to return to a place where I’m expected to give you orders, and you’re expected to bow your head and obey? Where everyone thinks our bond is based on lust and convenience, and I’m just ‘infatuated’ with you? Things are different here, Rishka.”

“Yeah, they’re certainly different.” Tilrey sounded impatient. “When we go back to Redda, we can work on making Oslov a better, fairer place, if that’s something you’re suddenly enthusiastic about. Believe me, I’m for it. This settlement, though—it’s not the goal, Gersha. It’s a tool in a larger struggle. It’s not self-sustaining, and it was never meant to be. As we’ve both seen, it still has prisons and interrogations, and for us, it _is_ a prison. We need to go back where we belong and—”

“We could get married, Tilrey.”

“What?”

Gersha had to lower his gaze again. His face was blazing, his chest and throat tight with the feelings he knew were spilling over in his eyes. “It’s permitted here,” he said, staring into the emerald grass. “It’s official. You could be my . . .”

The word “husband” got trapped in his throat. He shook his head, suddenly terrified of the look he might see on Tilrey’s face.

When Tilrey spoke again, though, he didn’t sound annoyed, only bemused. “I didn’t know that was something you wanted.”

“I didn’t either. It wasn’t something I could even imagine. But now I know it is possible, somewhere—here—it’s all I can think about.” Gersha peeled Tilrey’s hand off his knee and clasped it, hard. “I want to be joined to you, officially, in front of everybody. I want everybody to know. So no one will ever look at us again and see a Councillor and a kettle boy.”

After a moment, Tilrey went lax and rested his head on Gersha’s shoulder. That was what finally loosed Gersha’s tears.

They sat there, hands and bodies entwined, Gersha shuddering a little. At last Tilrey said, “I’ve never thought of marriage that way, to be honest. Practically all the men who ever fucked me were married, and a lot of them hated their wives’ guts. It was a duty, not a choice.”

“Your parents didn’t hate each other. When your mom talks about your father, it’s obvious she was madly in love with him.”

“So she says. It’s easy to idealize a dead man. But what about your parents, Gersha? They had a love match, and they were miserable.”

Gersha had been trying not to think about his parents. “That’s different. It was more lust than love in the end. My dad was weak, and my mom was sap-drowned. They weren’t anything like . . . well, like us.” The weight of Tilrey’s head on his shoulder gave him courage. “We’ve been together seven years. We’ve stood the test of time.”

“Have we?”

Gersha’s breath caught. “What happened at home—it doesn’t mean anything here. It’s over.”

Tilrey lifted his head again and forced Gersha to meet his gaze. “Is that why you want to stay here? Because we can just erase the version of the past where I’m a traitor and you reject me? Pretend it never happened?”

“It’s not like that.” But maybe it was, just a little. It was so much easier to sweep it all away than to face it.

Behind them, a crystal-sharp female voice asked, “Am I interrupting a private moment?”

A few moments ago, Gersha would have been irritated by the interruption, but now the sight of Celinda was a welcome distraction. She dashed over and hugged Tilrey before he could try to stand. Tilrey went rigid with his arms at his sides, face utterly blank, as if he were too startled to reciprocate.

Celinda laughed. “Think you’re seeing a ghost, Rishka? Well, _you_ certainly look good, except for that little mishap.” She gestured at his cast.

He just stared at her. “Egil told me you got away. But I didn’t know you were here.”

Celinda grinned in a way that struck Gersha as deliberately provocative and a little flirtatious. “In the flesh.”

“Wearing a coverall with your hair in a sensible bun.” Tilrey scowled as if her teasing annoyed him. “I never thought I’d see that.”

“Still mad at me? We’re on the same side now.” She turned to Gersha. “You have to understand, the last time Tilrey and I saw each other, I was, uh, playing a bit of a charade. Pretending to be a shirker to entrap him into a confession. Only I wasn’t actually pretending, was I?”

“Layers on layers,” Tilrey muttered.

“And he didn’t fall for any of my blandishments.” Celinda gave Tilrey’s shoulder a playful tap. “You should be proud, Gersha. It took a long, long time to turn this one into a shirker. He didn’t want to betray the Republic because he saw it as betraying you.”

Gersha’s and Tilrey’s eyes met for a second before Tilrey looked away, his cheeks reddening. “Well, _you_ haven’t changed, Celinda. Much as I’d like to sit around and reminisce, I need to talk to Egil.”

“I was actually just coming to tell you he’ll see you now.” Her smile became all sweetness as she fetched the crutches from against the tree. “See that building across the way, with the big curved window in front? I’ll walk you over.”

As Tilrey hauled himself up, Gersha rose, too, ready to help him across the green. But Celinda said, “Not you. I came to find you, too, for a different reason. Wait here.”

Gersha protested, but Tilrey was already hobbling across the grass, his strong biceps making him surprisingly fast and agile. “This needs to be just me and Egil,” he said, turning back. “Classified stuff, so to speak. Be here when I get back, okay, love?”

On the last word, he caught Gersha’s eye. Something passed between them that Gersha couldn’t name, and he sank obediently back down on the bench.

He watched Celinda walk Tilrey to the building and open the door for him, feeling as if an invisible tether connected his chest to the disappearing form. Stretching it didn’t break it, but it hurt. He knew Tilrey’s efforts to persuade Ranek would end in disappointment, but he had to let him try anyway.

Celinda’s words had surprised him. Tilrey had hinted that his participation in the True Hearth had been reluctant at first, but Gersha had dismissed that as an excuse. After all, you couldn’t just be a _little_ treasonous. Besides, Tilrey was the one with the motive to rebel, the one who’d been nearly crushed by the system, over and over, in ways Gersha still cringed to think about.

Had Tilrey really hesitated because of _him_ , while Gersha, who had a vested interest in the system, had turned traitor in mere days? No wonder Tilrey could barely believe it.

Was Tilrey right in what he’d said earlier? Had Gersha resigned himself to his fate so easily because, on some level, he _wanted_ to escape into this world of green? He’d hated the coverall at first, hated the sameness, and yet, and yet—

“Reunited with your true love, and here you sit brooding.”

Gersha did his best to glare at Celinda. He hadn’t been able to dislike her since he witnessed her patience and gentleness with the woods-clan girls, and even her teasing was growing on him. “I tried to tell him to hold off. But he has it in his head that he can persuade Ranek to let us go home like nothing’s happened.”

“Maybe he can.”

He shook his head. “Don’t joke about that.”

“Why wouldn’t Tilrey be able to persuade him? Because Ranek is—was—an Upstart?” That mocking smile was on her lips again. “That’s never stopped Tilrey from convincing you to do things, has it?”

A blush stained Gersha’s cheeks. “That’s different—you should understand. What did you want me for, anyway? Tilrey wants me to wait here.”

“At his command, eh?” Celinda winked. “Oh, you can wait. But when you’re done here, I’ve got somebody who wants to see you before dinner. She says she needs to make sure we’re not hurting you.”

“Peony?” His heart leapt—but how could she already be here?

“Peony.” Celinda rolled her eyes, but he knew she wasn’t really annoyed. “She came before we even got the message to her. Waylaid one of our foraging teams in the woods and demanded to be taken to you. Let me tell you, that girl is a handful.”

***

Egil asked, “Off the painkillers now?”

“The heavy ones, yes. My brain’s quite clear.” Tilrey settled himself in a chair across the conference table and propped up his crutches. He faced the interrogator’s cagey dark eyes, remembering all the times they’d matched wits before, first in the Int/Sec cell and then in the empty apartment where Egil had attempted to give him an education in Dissidence. “Gersha told me all about the treason he committed for you last night,” he said. “Or should I say the treason you extorted from him?”

Egil smiled thinly. “Gersha isn’t a child. He knew exactly what he was doing, and I paid a hefty price for it. Your sergeant could have been a valuable resource, but I’ve promised not to touch him.”

“He’s not a resource, he’s a man. An innocent bystander.” Tilrey didn’t let his gaze waver. “And I’ve secured his pledge to keep quiet about this place. You’re going to allow him to defect and disappear into Resurgence the way he originally planned. Then you’re going to let us go.”

Egil opened his mouth, but Tilrey went on: “It’s the only way. A massive search for Gersha would end badly for the Southern Hearth.”

“Ah, but what if the search proceeds in a different direction? What if the Duke tells Albertine that Gersha went north to find you, toward the town of Senjy, and vanished there?”

The misdirection might work, Tilrey had to admit. For all his doubts about Egil’s morality, the man’s steely determination got things done.

Most of the time—because even Ranek Egil had his moments of weakness and miscalculation. Tilrey happened to be well informed about one misstep in particular, the one that had landed him here. “I met a friend of yours from Int/Sec,” he said. “A bright young Raised named Bors Dartán.”

Ranek blinked a bit too hard. “Poor kid. How was he?”

“Unpleasant and very dogged and dogmatic. I believe he was the one who got you arrested?”

“I know. An error of judgment on my part.” Ranek’s eyes wandered almost wistfully around the room. “Hubris, perhaps. He seemed so naïve, so receptive, and he _is_ Irin’s cousin. I thought I could turn him.”

Tilrey allowed himself a cold smile. “I made a little error of judgment with Dartán myself. He’s cleverer than he lets on. He ended up ratting me out to Gersha.”

“I was wondering how Gersha found out.” Egil propped his head on a hand and regarded Tilrey sidelong. “I didn’t think you’d be naïve enough to confess to him in a romantic fit of frankness.”

“Oh, I haven’t been naïve for a long, long time, Ranek.” Tilrey wasn’t sure he’d ever used Egil’s first name before, but now it felt natural, just as holding his gaze did. They weren’t an interrogator and a prisoner anymore, or even an Upstart and a Laborer. They were comrades-in-arms, and he wasn’t going to be the one who took orders anymore.

“We’re on the same side,” he continued, “and I think you’ll find it’s in everyone’s interest for you to allow us to leave and continue our work in Redda.”

“Of course we’d like your work to continue. I said so yesterday. But it’s too risky, and this settlement survives by minimizing risk. I can’t depend on your sergeant’s word.”

“I vouch for him. He has a very strong motivation to disappear. There’s something more important, though, Ranek—something you don’t know about. It could change the course of the revolution, for good or ill, and if you keep us prisoners here, you may spend your life wondering whether you could have steered events instead of falling victim to them.”

The interrogator sighed. “I know you’re a political strategist now, but enough of the vague crap. Do you have a card up your sleeve again? Lay it on me. This better be good.”

Tilrey prayed to everything green that it was good enough. “Before I came here, as I think you know, I spent time with the exile—Malsha Linnett. And he gave me some very interesting, if incomplete, information.”

***

It took nearly two hours for Tilrey to emerge. When he did, Gersha, who’d been watching the glass-fronted building, jogged over to offer his help.

He had every expectation of being rebuffed, so he was surprised when Tilrey gave him one crutch and slung an arm over his shoulder, looking gray and a little drained. “I want to sit down again.”

Gersha found a bench in a bay on the building’s flank, where bees buzzed among tall purple-headed flowers. “Maybe I should go get the chair.”

“No! I just need to catch my breath.” Tilrey leaned back against the building, catching both Gersha’s hands in his. “Then we have to start packing and prepping, because we’re leaving tomorrow.”

Gersha nearly pulled away. “We’re—what?”

“Don’t argue with me, sweetheart. Please.” Tilrey closed his eyes. “I just came from a long and rather acrimonious debate. I won, but barely, and I can’t face any more of that right now.”

“With Ranek? He said yes?” For a wild instant, Gersha wondered if Tilrey could be delirious. But he seemed rational, just exhausted. “How on earth?” he asked—and then wanted to take the words back, because somehow they’d sounded like an accusation.

“I’ll explain everything soon enough, love, believe me. I’ve made Ranek a promise, and I’ll need your help to carry it out.” Tilrey’s fingers tightened around Gersha’s. “We’re in this together now, aren’t we?”

_He made a promise. He made a deal with Ranek that involves me, and I don’t even know the terms._ For an instant, Gersha’s throat was choked with injured pride, but it made no sense to protest. He wanted to leave, didn’t he? Of course he wanted to leave. To go home. As long as they went together, he would go anywhere.

He didn’t like having arrangements made for him, behind his back. But as he absorbed this new reality, he couldn’t help feeling a sneaky swell of joy at his lover’s triumph. Gersha might be good at quoting Whyberg and giving speeches, but Tilrey was the real politician and always had been. Was it so bad to admit that to himself?

If only he could feel more enthusiastic about leaving.

After a long moment, he squeezed Tilrey’s hands and raised them to his lips for a kiss. “We’re in this together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it was De_Borah who reminded me that Gersha needs to apologize. Anyway, thank you, because he sure does! (I thought it was in this chapter, but it's actually the next one. And possibly various future chapters. :) )
> 
> The next chapter will be a long one with maybe a bit of fluff in it. :) I think the whole story is going to top out at 100k words, but there are a lot of loose ends to tie up! I understand now why SFF novels are so huge. :) Thank you for reading, kudo-ing, commenting! I love it. <3


	26. The Bond

“I’m not staying here!” Peony protested once she’d given Gersha a fierce, rib-cracking hug. “The lady wants me to.” She indicated Celinda, who hovered just within earshot, picking herbs in the refuge’s garden. “I told her I’m just here to make sure you’re not dead. And to give you this.”

She handed Gersha a familiar metal sliver. His heart thudded at the sight of his handheld—screen cracked, battery dead, circuits probably fried by dew and rain, but still his.

“Thank you,” he said, and sat down in the tall grass because standing suddenly seemed too hard. He’d experienced too much in the past ten-day, and so much of it made no sense, and no one understood, not even Tilrey, who hadn’t been through these jarring transitions.

He wasn’t used to towering over Peony; she seemed so small now, despite her attempts at bravado. He wasn’t used to having the power. And he couldn’t stop looking at her fresh black eye and the lurid bruise on her cheek.

“You didn’t need to return it,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake. “I was hoping you’d come here, but not for me. For you.”

“Me?” Peony must have seen where he was looking; she touched the bruises as if just remembering them. “My dad was pissed at me when he found out your demon box was gone, but I’ve had worse. I’m fine.”

She grinned jauntily, and the spinning in Gersha’s head intensified. Tilrey had said practically the same thing about his bruises when they first met. For years Gersha had tried to protect Tilrey, to make sure he never got hurt again, and now Tilrey refused to be protected. Tilrey was making deals without him.

He reminded himself Tilrey wasn’t a child. Peony was. “Have you met the other girls here yet?”

“Yeah.” She sat down cross-legged beside Gersha and rattled off names too fast for him to catch. “And there’s Yarrow—she’s from my clan. We tracked her a ways through the woods when she disappeared, but we thought a bear must’ve got her.”

“They seem to like it here, don’t they?” He tried to find an angle on the refuge that wouldn’t sound preachy or condescending. “They weave for a living, and they always have warm beds and enough to eat. They tried to teach me to knit,” he added, seeing her skeptical look.

Peony burst out laughing. “I bet that was a sight.”

“It was!” Gersha laughed, too, but not for long. How did you sell the Southern Hearth to someone who was used to living a wild existence, perilous but free? Or free in some ways and unfree in others that he couldn’t imagine? Was freedom always relative? “You know,” he said, pulling up blades of grass, “I really did believe they’d hurt or kill me here. But it turns out they’re . . . friends.”

Peony tilted her head, playing with a braid. “The way they dress here is stupid. They all look the same, just like their houses and their machines.”

Gersha smiled conspiratorially. “I don’t like that, either.”

“You looked better with your old clothes.”

“But ‘the lady’’s nice, isn’t she? And what I told you about Oslov is true here, too.” He raised his voice to draw Celinda into the conversation. “Women here don’t have to marry anyone they don’t want to, isn’t that right?”

Celinda gave him one of her best eye-rolls and said in Harbourer, “Marriage and me don’t mix.” In Oslov, she added, “You’re not going to convince her to give up her entire culture in a single conversation, Gersha. If she’s happy here, she’ll stay. If not, not. In my experience with these girls, it’s fifty-fifty.”

Peony had a mischievous, slightly embarrassed look. “The lady scolded you,” she whispered to Gersha. “I could tell. Is she more important than you are?”

“Apparently so.” Gersha winked at Celinda over Peony’s head, then lowered his own voice. “I’ll tell you a secret—I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going home to Oslov.”

Peony nodded, but he could tell Oslov was just an abstraction for her. “Will you say goodbye to me?”

“Of course. But that’s not the actual secret part.”

She nodded again, eagerly. “I always keep secrets.”

Gersha leaned closer. “I don’t want to leave. I’m happier here than I’ve been for a long time.”

“Really?” Peony grimaced, clearly disappointed with his confession. “I’m not sure I like the houses here. It’s like being in a cave.”

She must be referring to the trapped air, the climate control—the very things that Gersha had sorely missed when he first left Oslov buildings behind. “The lady says you can stay here, too, as long as you want, and leave when you want,” he said. “Maybe give it a try for a few days?”

Peony was distracted by a butterfly flitting through the grass. “I guess. There’s this girl named Keziah; she’s getting married in a few weeks, and the girls are making her a shawl. They asked me to help.”

_Married._ Gersha remembered the council’s debate over Keziah’s planned marriage to an Oslov. And suddenly there it was, right in front of him. The one thing he wanted ( _needed_ ). The one thing that could make leaving tomorrow bearable.

“I wish her joy,” he said. “It must mean so much to be united to the one you love.”

***

“I just don’t understand you,” Tilrey said.

They were in the outdoor courtyard of the dining hall, where Tilrey had been supervising preparations for their departure. A messenger had been sent to alert the Duke, which involved transmitting code by flashing a strong light across the lake. With Krisha’s assistance, an ATV driver had been briefed on the route they’d take to rejoin the Duke’s guardsmen in Keene.

Now Krisha was back with Gavril; both of them were out of the detention block, thank everything green. One last, unpleasant task awaited: Tilrey would have to get his boot cast replaced with something more primitive and not so obviously of Oslov make.

Then he’d be ready to crash for the night, with or without his dinner. His head still ached from his long session with Egil (he still wasn’t sure what to call it—debate? negotiation? war?). His ankle throbbed as if in anticipation of being disturbed again. And Gersha, otherwise beautiful Gersha, was being annoying.

“We could do it so quickly,” Gersha was saying, lacing his fingers with Tilrey’s. “Right now, after dinner. I asked, and apparently any citizen of the settlement can officiate. It wouldn’t take five minutes.”

“And it wouldn’t _mean_ anything.” Tilrey spoke as gently as he could. “Back home, it won’t be legal. We couldn’t even talk about it.”

“But we would know.” Gersha pressed their clasped hands to his heart. His dark-lashed eyes were fixed on Tilrey’s—no longer dull with exhaustion, as they’d been earlier today, but glowing. A flush touched his pale cheeks, and an excited smile played at the corners of his mouth as if they were two boys plotting mischief. “It would matter to _us_.”

He was beautiful with those well-bred nostrils flaring, his whole body practically vibrating with anticipation. Tilrey pulled him close and kissed him—first lightly, then deeply, one hand buried in his hair. “You’re absolutely ridiculous,” he said as they came apart. “I can’t believe a bureaucratic ceremony means so much to you. This isn’t just a way of keeping me out of other people’s beds, is it?”

Gersha flinched a little, then shook his head. “I know I’ve been jealous sometimes, but I understand that we’re . . . different that way. You like to have variety. I only want you.”

“And sometimes Besha,” Tilrey pointed out.

“But I only want him if you’re there, too. With you, everything’s good.” Gersha raised his eyes like a child asking a favor. “I’m not trying to change you, Rishka. Anyway, when has marriage ever made someone faithful?”

Indeed. When Tilrey thought about marriage, he thought of Vera Linnett coming to his bed to avoid the husband she could barely tolerate. He thought of Albertine Linnett and her husband treating each other with strained civility. He thought of Malsha, who refused even to speak of his wife except to say, “We had little in common.” The happiest example of a married couple he’d seen with his own eyes was Besha and Davita, and they lived apart and were constantly bickering. Why would anyone enter into that bond except to produce legitimate offspring?

But here was Gersha, with his flush deepening and his lips red from the kiss, saying, “I need this, Rishka. If we have to go home and be like we were before, I need something to remind me we were here together. That we were—are—equal.”

Did he know how irresistible that shy gaze from under his eyelashes was? Tilrey rubbed his cheek against Gersha’s curls, then rested his chin on his head, savoring every sensitive, difficult, frustrating, delicious inch of him. “Is that really what you believe?”

Gersha pressed tight against him. “I know it’s not that simple. We’re a work-in-progress. And you can say no—of course you can say no. But this means something to me, Rishka. That’s all I can say.”

_I love you too fucking much._ Tilrey kissed Gersha’s temple. “I actually _can’t_ seem to say no to you, but for the record, I can’t take this entirely seriously, either. I hope you’re okay with that.”

Drawing back a little, he ran his hand through Gersha’s hair, then down his neck—ignoring Gersha’s soft gasp—until he grasped the chain that hung there. “You’re still wearing my talisman.”

Gersha looked contrite as Tilrey tugged the pendant up and over his head and hung it around his own neck. “Why did you leave it on my pillow?”

“Because I was an idiot. I wanted your attention, wanted you to stop treating me like a criminal.” He ran his knuckles softly down Gersha’s cheek.

Gersha’s eyes filled. “I did do that, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, Rishka. I was so afraid. If I could undo all of it—”

“But you can’t.” He kept his tone mild. “And marrying me and calling me your husband isn’t going to change what happened at home. It’s not going to change Oslov or how people see us. You know that.”

“I guess we’ll deal with that when the time comes. But when you say you can’t take this seriously, which part do you mean?”

Gersha sounded so worried, so plaintive, that Tilrey had to kiss him again—grinning this time, even as he felt tears prick his own eyes. Moving his mouth to Gersha’s ear, he said, “I mean the formalities. The words, the gestures. Those things just embarrass me.”

He didn’t want to remind Gersha that the ceremonial bonds he’d accepted in the past hadn’t been his choice. The tea ceremony and the licking of sap from men’s hands were gestures of submission. Marriage was a bond between equals, though, and did he even know how to do that?

Maybe Malsha was right about this one thing. The power had seesawed back and forth between him and Gersha, but until now, Tilrey hadn’t been able to imagine they could be at the same level. The prospect daunted him a little. Would it mean total honesty? Was he capable of that after so many years of telling half-truths—not just to Gersha, but to virtually everyone in his life?

All he could do was give it a try.

“So who’s going to perform this ceremony?” he asked.

***

The ceremony took less than five minutes—which was good, because they had to stand up for it.

Ulka, who had officiated at several marriages and knew the formulas by heart, did the honors in the conference room over dessert. The Southern Hearth’s whole council was present, because Gersha had insisted on as many witnesses as possible. He knew many of his fellow Councillors would have roared with laughter at the very notion of this ceremony—doubly illegal and, to them, absurd—but he wasn’t ashamed.

Ulka, he could tell, understood. She recited the words in a resonant voice, without hesitation:

“Ernst Gerhard Gádden, do you affirm your bond of lifelong partnership with this man, Tilhard Edvard Bronn? Do you give him your hand in love and fellowship and vow to support your joint endeavors until your last moment?”

As she spoke, she wound a ribbon around their clasped hands, tying them fast. Celinda had provided the binding material, crafted from colorful fabric scraps by the girls at the refuge. She was watching from the council table, her face glowing—for once, without a trace of mockery.

Gersha tightened his grip and looked straight into Tilrey’s eyes. “Till my last moment and even beyond, I am yours.”

He half expected Tilrey to glance away, embarrassed by the words “and even beyond,” which he’d improvised. The ceremony was loosely based on Whyberg’s marriage script, and Whyberg didn’t believe in an afterlife—or, for that matter, in love beyond the bonds of family. The word _ináthera_ —love as passion, _their_ love—didn’t appear in his text.

Gersha didn’t care. Despite what Tilrey had said about not taking the formalities seriously, he was looking straight back at Gersha with his beautiful eyes wide and liquid. Ulka’s voice became a drone that Gersha barely heard. There was only Tilrey, opening his mouth and saying in a surprisingly ringing voice, “Till my last moment and even beyond, whether there’s anything beyond or not, I am yours.”

“Let the bond be witnessed.” Ulka unwound the ribbon from their hands and let it slip to the floor.

It unfurled gracefully, briefly seeming to float in midair, and in that instant Gersha swore his own private vow: _My loyalty is to him now._

Tilrey’s hand tugged itself free. At first, Gersha thought he was simply eager to be done, but then he understood. Still using his other arm to support himself on the crutch, Tilrey lifted the pendant over his head and took a limping step toward Gersha.

So that’s why he’d wanted it back. Gersha closed the distance and bent his head.

Tilrey’s arm rose, and then the pendant swayed around Gersha’s neck again, right above his heart. With a quick stroke of Gersha’s cheek, Tilrey withdrew. “From now on, wear this as our token.”

Gersha expected Ulka to object that they kept modifying the ceremony—which would have been unheard of at home—but when he glanced at her, she was crying. So he leaned toward Tilrey, awkwardly because of the crutch caught between them, and gave himself up to a long, passionate kiss that was _definitely_ not in the script.

After that, he expected the attendees to disperse quickly, abashed by all the breaches of protocol. Nothing of the kind happened.

Chairs were pulled out for the two of them, and some surprisingly good stewed fruit was served. Strangers came up to congratulate them. Sved Balint, the Laborer who’d eyed Gersha with suspicion on his first night in the Hearth, cracked open a bottle. “My homemade elderberry cordial,” he said, pouring two glasses.

He slid the first one to Tilrey. “Ranek tells me you’re from ’Skein Sector Six.”

Tilrey nodded. “Born and raised, anyway.”

Balint passed the second glass to Gersha, who took a swallow; the cordial was dry and _very_ strong. Managing not to choke, he added, “His mother’s the Supervisor now.”

“Lisha Lindtmerán is your mother? I’m from Four, but I’ve had dealings with her.” Balint clapped Tilrey heartily on the back. “Fine woman! She’d be proud if she could see this. Her kid with a Councillor!”

“I’m not a Councillor here,” Gersha pointed out. But Balint was already busy filling the rest of the glasses and guffawing at a loud conversation in the corner.

Tilrey sipped the cordial, which made his eyes even brighter, and patted Gersha’s hand. “Old habits are hard to break. Are you going to be a stickler for the rules of Dissidence just like you were a stickler for Whybergism?”

Gersha clasped the hand back. “Probably.”

They were nearly done with their glasses when Celinda came to collect their empty bowls. She asked Gersha, “You’ll come say goodbye to Peony tonight? I think she wants to give you something.”

Were they really leaving first thing tomorrow? The thought still gave Gersha a distinct pang, though _not_ going where Tilrey went wasn’t even a possibility. He said, “Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Don’t let her delay your wedding night for too long, though.” Celinda’s eyes had the wicked glint they’d been missing during the ceremony. “It may not be anyone’s first time”—she gave Tilrey a playful nudge—“but you still want to make it special.”

Gersha’s cheeks burned, but Tilrey was grinning. “Oh, we’ll make it special, all right.”

“You’ve done okay for yourself, lad. For the longest time, I didn’t think there could be anything real between you.” She shifted her gaze to Gersha. “But now I actually know you, Fir Councillor, I see you’re a sweet, romantic fool.”

“That’s really not fair—”

Celinda silenced Tilrey’s defense by raising her glass. “And you’re just as silly and romantic, which makes it a perfect match.” She downed the cordial in a single gulp. “To fools!”

“To fools!” echoed the tipsy council members with gales of laughter.

After a second glass, they managed to make their escape from the conference room, but only after they’d accepted a fresh bottle of cordial from Sved Balint—“to enjoy when you’re alone in your room”—and weathered a chorus of good-natured ribald commentary.

Ranek held the door for Tilrey and accompanied them into the hall. He’d been quiet throughout the festivities, despite raising his glass with the others.

“Best go to the infirmary first,” he said as the door closed behind them, silencing the clamor within. “I’ve made sure Medic Arnstedt will be waiting for you, but she doesn’t want to wait all evening.”

“Thanks.” Tilrey’s face was rosy from the cordial and the exertion of keeping his balance, but the moment his eyes met Ranek’s, they went cold sober. “I do appreciate all your cooperation.”

Ranek had already turned away from him. “Gersha,” he said abruptly, “I don’t want us to part on bad terms.”

Gersha didn’t want to have this conversation, not now—but when else? “Of course,” he mumbled.

“I know we’ve argued, but I’m going to miss you more than you can know. I’m not good at, well, this kind of thing, but it meant a great deal to see you again.”

Gersha felt the tension melt from him. Whatever their differences, this was still his friend. “It meant a great deal to me, too. I thought you were _dead_ , Ranek. But I wish . . . well, I wish.”

He wished too many things: that he could stay here with Tilrey forever. That the two of them could sit on the council and push through a resolution to dismantle the detention area and turn dissent into anything but a crime.

Ranek’s dark eyes shone—were those actual tears? “I just wanted you to know,” he said in a clipped, stilted way, “I’ve taken your feedback under advisement. There may be habits we’ve fallen into here that are . . . not productive. In the meantime, I’ve released the girl, the vandal you were concerned about, with a warning.”

Something clenched in Gersha’s chest. “And her friends?”

“They remain unidentified. For now.” Ranek sighed, clearly not without misgivings. “Kids have to make mistakes, I suppose.”

“I don’t think you’ll regret it, Ranek.” Gersha stepped across the space between them to pull his friend into an embrace. “I’ll miss you, too.”

***

The doctor wasn’t happy about having to undo her own work and redo it with primitive, Harbourer-style splinting materials. But she was patient with Tilrey—and with Gersha, who once again insisted on holding his hand the entire time. When Tilrey’s face went taut with pain, Gersha rubbed his back and whispered in his ear, “We can have the second bottle when we’re back in the room.”

“It’s mending well so far,” the doctor said as Gersha fetched Tilrey’s crutches again. “Just mind you keep him from putting his full weight on it—he seems like the type who’d try.”

Tilrey’s protests and Gersha’s assurances carried them back outside. The sun had set, but the lamps along the path weren’t on yet. The air was still warm, with scents of evergreens and decaying leaves wafting from the wooded patches. Children’s laughter sounded from the underbrush as they played a running-and-hiding game.

A powerful certainty gripped Gersha: They were going home, and home was not his apartment in Oslov anymore. It was the bare little dorm room where, for the first time, they would embrace as spouses.

“Husband,” he whispered, helping Tilrey up the exterior stairs of the building. Tilrey bent to nip his earlobe and whispered it back.

Upstairs, Tilrey propped his crutches against the wall and collapsed on the edge of the bed. “Verdant hells, I’m wiped out. You must be even worse.”

Gersha had been feeling the effects of his sleepless night until the elderberry cordial gave him a rush of energy. “I’ve got one last goodbye. But you just went through something stressful, and you mustn’t let me keep you up,” he added, trying to sound sincere.

Tilrey laughed. He had a particular smile that was both playful and predatory, showing too many white teeth—a darker cousin of the radiant grin he used to win people over. He used that smile now, and then he patted his knee.

Already hard, Gersha came over and settled himself gingerly in Tilrey’s lap, keeping his weight on Tilrey’s good side. “Are you sure? I’m not hurting you?”

Tilrey slid strong arms around Gersha and began unfastening his coverall, shifting so Gersha rested directly on the answering hardness between his legs. “You. Are. Not. Hurting. Me,” he hissed in Gersha’s ear—then caught his earlobe and nipped harder than before. “We need to consummate this marriage, don’t we?”

Gersha was helplessly hard now, his whole body tense with need even as he molded himself to the larger form. It felt so good to be enclosed, protected. “Husband,” he said.

“Is that going to be our whole coital conversation? Passing that word back and forth?” Without waiting for an answer, Tilrey flipped Gersha over on his back, stretched him out, and finished peeling the coverall from him, followed by his briefs. “Mmm. I think it’s my turn to have you.”

Gersha answered without words, arching his back to press his pulsing, needy body tightly against his husband’s. He closed his eyes and shivered with pleasure as Tilrey’s mouth opened against his bare throat, sending prickles of sensation all the way to his toes.

Tilrey’s first slick finger inside him felt enormous, pleasure edging toward pain. Gersha thrust his hips up to take more of it. “Don’t make me wait too long,” he said, the words coming on a gasp.

“So you’re bossing me around now? Husband?” Tilrey angled the finger knowingly.

Gersha saw starbursts, his shoulders ramming the mattress as his spine twisted with the force of his arousal. “Oh, please,” he breathed.

Tilrey kept the preliminaries short, just long enough to get Gersha comfortable, stroking his cock after each new perfect, agonizing probe of his fingers. Then he bent Gersha double, knees in the air. “You’re a little tight, love. I’ll try not to hurt you.”

Gersha felt something burst from his throat that might have been a sob. “I want all of you. It’s been too long. _So_ long.”

All of Tilrey was a lot, but Gersha was ready. He waited while the initial shock of penetration settled into a delicious almost-too-fullness. Tilrey waited, too, going absolutely still on top of him. “Look at me, love,” he said, and Gersha’s eyes opened before his mind could process the command.

Tilrey started slow, eyes locked on Gersha’s, each thrust of his powerful hips fluid and continuous with the next. He’d stripped off his own coverall, and Gersha could see his shoulders straining with each stroke, his bulging pectorals gleaming in the last light. He smelled their mingled sweat, heard Tilrey’s rough, quiet gasps.

When Tilrey plunged home for the first time, Gersha moaned and reared up off the bed. For a moment, he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but hold him. Then he pulled Tilrey down for a wild kiss. “Harder,” he said. “Faster.”

Instead of obeying, Tilrey stilled his hips again, still buried deep inside Gersha, and reached between them to give his attention to Gersha’s desperately straining cock. “When you fucked me this morning,” he said hoarsely, “I didn’t even need the signal. Did you notice?”

“I thought so—green hells!” The words became a helpless bray as Tilrey’s hand moved faster, impossibly tight. “Not yet,” Gersha managed when he could speak again. “Want to come with you.”

The next few minutes were a blur of friction and sliding and fullness and pounding in his temples and the world compressing itself to the single point that was his cock in Tilrey’s hand and Tilrey’s cock pistoning inside him. Impossible to say where one of them ended and the other began. Tilrey was slamming into him now, their bodies colliding with bruising force on each deep stroke.

When Gersha couldn’t hold back anymore, he let the hot, pulsing current carry him away. He was dimly aware of Tilrey crying out as the force of his own climax bent him backward, his teeth bared in an animal grimace. Warmth flooded Gersha, and he closed his eyes at last, his whole body spasming with the force of release.

It took a while to untangle their bodies and slide apart. Tilrey had turned to dead weight, his cock slowly softening, so Gersha waited till he could no longer ignore the urgent messages of discomfort from his thighs and hips.

Then he stretched out with Tilrey still on top of him, his bulk both reassuring and crushing against Gersha’s ribs. The deep rasps of his breathing told Gersha he was asleep.

Gersha would have liked to join him, to cradle him through the night, but there was still Peony to see. _Soon_. He eased the weight of his husband very gently off him, whispered, “Get some rest, love,” and limped up off the bed to make himself presentable again.

***

When Gersha made his way back from saying goodbye to Peony, night was falling. It had been a long evening, and now only the west was still pale with the fading flame of a glorious sunset.

He took the long way, strolling the grassy path along the wall, wanting to return to Tilrey yet wanting to experience the sights and sounds of the Southern Hearth a little longer.

On his left hand he wore a sort of knitted gauntlet, a present from Peony, who said she’d stitched her clan colors into it and it would be “good in the cold.” He resolved to bring it back with him to Oslov, carefully hidden. Maybe, with the Duke’s permission, he could also bring _The Marriage of Oslov & Harbour_.

Marriage. Hah. At first glance, the book’s title had seemed a sterile allegorical conceit, worthy of a high-named Upstart. Now Gersha wondered, though: Had Edvard Linnett experienced anything like the awakening he’d experienced here? Had he loved someone in Harbour?

Sex was good in the cold, or coming in from the cold. It was heat, it was life and survival. But here, with the air already mellow with ripe vegetation and tepid as a bath, it was . . . different. More urgent, as if the whole world were telling them to get on with it before the harvest ended and the frosts came. He would always remember how it felt here.

Coming around a curve, Gersha found a dark figure standing on tiptoe beside the wall. Was she reaching up to grab something? No, no, she had a spray can, only this time she was using her other hand to scrub the concrete with some sort of brush.

“It’s you,” he said. “I thought Ranek let you go with a warning.”

The graffiti artist paused briefly to acknowledge him, then returned to effacing her own words. “He did, and then he said I’d made a mess and needed to clean it up. Aren’t you going back to Oslov tomorrow, _Councillor_?”

So she knew who he was, like everybody else. “I still don’t know your name,” Gersha said, trying to sound humble. “Could I give you a hand? You must want to get home.”

“No, actually, I like the dark.” But she handed him her wire brush. “My name’s Gregoria. You have to scrub really fucking hard, and even then, it leaves a mark. I didn’t think Upstarts did this kind of work.”

“I never did before.” Gersha sprayed nasty-smelling cleanser from the can, then attacked the wall with the brush. “I’m sorry,” he said after a minute or so of hard labor. “About Ranek hauling you in that way.”

In the dark, he couldn’t see Gregoria’s expression, but her posture telegraphed aggressive disinterest. “That didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I know. But it shouldn’t be happening.” Gersha tried to translate his anger into cleaning power, but the paint was stubborn. He was fairly sure daylight would reveal glaring brush-strokes in the concrete. “This place shouldn’t be like Oslov. There’s a role for lawful dissent—that’s the whole _point_. And I can understand why you feel trapped here, but it won’t always be this way.”

Gregoria laughed and said in a sing-song voice, as if reciting a lesson, “One day we’ll return to Oslov, and it will be all ours, a land of beautiful equality.”

“I don’t see what’s funny about that. It _could_ happen.”

He’d stopped scrubbing, and she took the brush from him. “Sure, it could, Fir. But what if I don’t want to go back and freeze my ass off at the North Pole when I could live here instead and walk barefoot in the grass?”

Glancing down, Gersha saw her feet actually were bare, pale against the near-blackness of the grassy path. “We’re Oslovs,” he said. “Harbour is a wonderful place, but it’s not, it’s not—”

“Not our home?” She grinned—a flash of teeth in the dusk—and started working again, the wire-on-concrete friction sending shivers down Gersha’s spine. “Maybe not _your_ home, Fir. But it sure feels like mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tend to fall on Tilrey's side of the question when it comes to marriage and weddings—not really into the whole thing—but with these two? What can I say, I just want them to be happy. :) Also, this could be an anchor for Gersha as he returns to Oslov and the pull of his old habits.
> 
> Thank you, sharp-eyed Fair_Feather_Friend, for catching the fact that Tilrey can't return with his fancy cast. I'd completely forgotten!


	27. Farewells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's on the short side, but I might post the final chapters a little faster if I can. I hope everybody's enjoying summer (if it's summer where you are), and thank you for reading! <3

The trip through the woods that had taken three days on foot took only a few hours in one of the Southern Hearth’s rugged all-terrain vehicles. Running even the electric motor got risky as they approached civilization, though, so about two kilometers from the town of Keene, everybody had to scramble out and walk the rest of the way.

Tilrey had enjoyed the ride, bumpy as it was, and didn’t relish using his crutches again. His ankle was still tender from the replacement of the cast, but the logging road in front of them was carpeted with pine needles and reasonably easy to navigate.

While Krisha went on ahead, acting as scout, Gavril and Gersha matched their pace to Tilrey’s. In the dappled, rusty light that filtered through the pines, Tilrey kept catching Gersha gazing dreamily at him. Each time their eyes met, the Councillor blushed and looked away.

Tilrey felt a pleasant warmth on his own cheeks as he remembered Gersha saying _Husband_. He was sorry he’d crashed so completely last night, before they could have a second act, but there’d be other opportunities.

Eventually the trees parted and the road forked, with the larger branch winding past green pastures full of sheep and mossy outbuildings. A pond sparkled in the sun where Krisha stood waiting for them.

“Here’s where we part ways, Fira,” he said with a respectful bob of the head toward Gersha. “You two to the right, to Keene”—he pointed— “and us to the left, to Placid. The inn where we left the Duke’s men is just past that orchard.”

Tilrey knew it had been hard for Gersha to leave the Southern Hearth, but for his part, he didn’t feel much affection for the place, and he’d been too busy for regrets. The whole way here, he’d been plotting the next few days in his head—specifically, what to tell Albertine about Gersha’s unsanctioned trip. His brain was worn out from all the scheming. Now, though, he had to face it—he might never see these friends again.

Gavril took Tilrey by surprise, yanking him into a bone-rattling hug that nearly toppled him from his crutches. “Sorry I was a dick when we first met,” he said raspily in Tilrey’s ear. “I thought you were just a simpering suck-up.”

“And I thought you were a knuckle-dragging boor.”

Gavril clapped him on the shoulder and set him back upright. “First impressions, right? Anyway, thanks, Rishka.” His eyes flitted to Krisha, full of possessive tenderness. “For everything.”

Tilrey returned the clap on the back. “I don’t think you’ll regret this, Gavril. Learn Harbourer, blend in, and stay far away from the Colonel’s troops. And if Malsha insists on finding you ‘amusing,’ try not to strangle him, okay? There could be consequences.”

“No worries—he’ll stay safe.” Krisha wound his arm around Gavril’s waist, looking closer to radiant than Tilrey had ever seen him before. “We’re gonna practice Harbourer all the way home, right, Gavi?”

Gavril guffawed. “If you’re okay with me just saying ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘good morning.’”

“‘Yes’ will probably come in handy,” Tilrey said as Krisha released Gavril and came over to him.

Tilrey didn’t feel comfortable with a hug and suspected Krisha felt the same. But as they clasped hands and made brief eye contact, something passed between them—a recognition tinged with apology on both sides.

“I trust you to keep him from doing anything brave and stupid,” Tilrey said, cocking his head toward Gavril—who protested, “When have I ever done anything stupid?”

Krisha didn’t crack a smile, but his bearing exuded confidence. “You can count on me.”

“I’m glad I knew both of you. Maybe our paths will cross again.” Tilrey wasn’t prepared for the sudden stab of grief in his chest as he privately acknowledged that was unlikely. This chapter of his life was over, and they were on to a new one of their own.

“I hope so. But if not—” Gavril held out a hand. “May your last moment be bright. Yours, too, Fir.”

“May your last moment be bright,” Tilrey repeated, his rendition overlapping with Gersha’s and Krisha’s.

The two tall men set off down the road to the left, walking shoulder to shoulder. Tilrey stood motionless on his crutches and watched as they disappeared into a birch grove where the play of light and shadow soon made their dark clothes indistinguishable from the road. Beside him he felt Gersha waiting patiently, letting him live in this moment of leavetaking a little longer.

When they were out of sight, Tilrey turned and said, “Let’s go home.”

***

It took the whole first half of the lake crossing for Tilrey to tell Gersha how he’d convinced Ranek to let them go. Gersha’s follow-up questions more than occupied the second half.

They’d spent the previous night in a hayloft in Essex, sleeping in each other’s arms—or trying to, since haylofts, Gersha now knew, were exceedingly uncomfortable. Still, it was easier than sleeping in a cage hanging from a tree, and any bed with Tilrey was better than a bed without him.

They hadn’t gotten up to anything last night, refraining from any sort of physical contact the guardsmen might notice. But now they sat close together, watching the schooner’s prow cleave the dark, roiling waves as sunrise painted the lake’s eastern reaches salmon and coral. Gulls wheeled above, the sun washing their wings orange.

Gersha was having trouble swallowing Malsha’s strange tale of infiltrators from Resurgence who hid out in Oslov brothels. “If these people actually exist,” he said, “how much do they matter? The worst they could do is kill a handful of Councillors, and even killing the entire Council at one fell swoop wouldn’t bring down Oslov. We’d hold new elections and start over.”

Tilrey nodded, the cool wind tugging his long side-bangs into his eyes. “What then, though? Think about it, Gersha. A brutal attack on the Council, from _inside_ Oslov, would show us that we have an enemy—something we haven’t had, except in an abstract sense, for centuries. People would be terrified. Faced with a threat from the outside, the government would crack down even more—on Dissent, on migration, on every paltry freedom we have left. That crackdown could make a revolution impossible—or inevitable. It all depends on precisely how things fall out.”

“So the True Hearth wants to know about this hypothetical attack before it happens—if it ever does happen. To stop it, I hope.”

Tilrey’s eyes met Gersha’s, dark blue in the wet morning light. “Or to steer it.”

“You mean . . . let it happen? _Make_ it happen?” Gersha felt itchy all over. His eyes darted the length of the schooner, from the helmsman to the crewmen tacking the sail to the guardsmen telling jokes and spitting into the boat’s wake. He reminded himself none of them could understand Oslov. Probably none would even care that the two of them were discussing a strategic bloodbath in the faraway north. _Councillors—my colleagues. My friends._

“Ranek seems to think the end justifies the means,” he said. “I hope you don’t.”

“You know I don’t.” They locked eyes again, and in that gaze was the recognition that they were free agents in a chosen alliance. They’d come here as a Councillor and his subordinate, but Tilrey’s political positions were no longer a function of Gersha’s; if anything, he was steering the course.

“But it is valuable intel,” Tilrey went on, “and I had to tell Ranek something to make him accept the risk of letting us go.”

“Why, though? I mean, once he knew everything, what made him comply?”

“Well, we don’t know the actual identities of any sleeper agents—or, as you say, whether they even exist. My first step will be to talk to a certain Hearth ally who’s been working and living in the Sanctioned Brothel for years. Maybe he knows them. If he doesn’t, then my only recourse is to find Artur Threindal, Malsha’s former secretary. He trained some of these agents, according to Malsha, and now he’s hiding in the Wastes. It could easily be a wild goose chase. But Threindal’s far more likely to talk to me than to anyone else, and Ranek knows it. I used that to put us on our way home.”

“Ranek wants you to go to the Wastes and find someone who may or may not be there?” Gersha was getting fidgety again. “So you’re taking missions from Int/Sec on the one hand and missions from the True Hearth on the other?”

Tilrey gave his knee a discreet pat. “I think this was my first and last Int/Sec mission. The next trip will be more of a low-key fact-finding expedition. You know, if you like, we could go to the Wastes together. It might even be fun.”

“Fun” and “the Wastes” were two concepts Gersha had rarely linked together, but something else was demanding his attention. “Verdant hells, Tilrey, speaking of missions—besides going essentially AWOL, I’ve neglected my diplomatic mission. I was supposed to persuade the Duke to host an Oslov garrison in Bettevy.”

Tilrey smiled in a knowing way that reminded Gersha of their plotting sessions at home. “You haven’t been neglecting it at all; you’ve simply been doing due diligence. Now you know something very interesting about the Duke—that he communicates with the Southern Hearth. That should give you the edge in your negotiations.”

Gersha groaned. Though they were both still wearing their new Harbourer disguises of soft buckskin, he felt his old responsibilities weigh heavier on his shoulders with each meter they sailed toward the green shore of Bettevy. “You’re forgetting that Duke Dalziel knows plenty about you and me, too—too much. He could ruin us.”

“He won’t, Gersha. But we’ll certainly need to have a good, long talk with him.” Gersha must have looked doleful, because Tilrey gave him a playful nudge in the ribs. “Don’t worry so much. I’ve been thinking about why the Duke doesn’t want this Oslov garrison. He claims he’s fearful of the Colonel, but think about it. Who’s he most afraid of?”

Gersha didn’t have to think hard about that. “Us. If Oslov chose, it could wipe out Resurgence in less than a ten-day. The only reason Oslov _doesn’t_ do that is our policy of isolation.”

“And if, instead of being an island, Oslov decided to become part of the mainland? To _take over_ the mainland? I mean, think of all we could gain.”

A ten-day ago, Gersha wouldn’t have understood what Tilrey meant—who on earth would choose this dirty chaos over clean, lovely Oslov? But now it was crystal clear. “The climate. The growing season, the resources . . . the beauty. The more time Oslovs spend in Harbour, the less likely they are to want to go back home. That’s the real reason the Duke doesn’t want us to expand beyond the Embassy. He doesn’t want us to start settling here.”

Tilrey turned and propped his elbows on the gunwale, facing Bettevy. “Malsha used to tell me it was the fate of Oslov to colonize Harbour, sooner or later. _The Islanders can insist on self-sufficiency all they want, but going after the good life is human nature,_ he’d say.”

Gersha saw tiny houses coming into focus on the fast-approaching shore. “Malsha was a psychopath. But the Southern Hearth . . . that’s already ‘colonization,’ isn’t it? Why do you think the Duke is helping them, if he’s worried about Oslovs pouring into his own land?”

“Maybe he wants to play different factions of Oslovs against each other. But that’s what we’ll need to find out, right? We should have a heart-to-heart with him soon—as soon as you’ve visited the Embassy and explained yourself to Albertine Linnett.”

Gersha groaned again; he’d been trying to forget that was his next order of business. “It’s going to be humiliating.”

Tilrey twisted back to face him. “I wouldn’t worry—Albertine’s reasonable. And I could be wrong, but I think she understands being in the throes of passion. I’ve heard gossip about an affair she had long ago while she was serving in Harbour. The Linnetts have a family tradition of losing their heads when they’re young and regaining them when they’re older.”

“And here I am, forty-three and still headless.” Gersha chuckled weakly, trying to make it into a joke. “But that’s not what really bothers me, Rishka. You know the instant we get back to the palace, you’ll start calling me Fir again, and I’ll have to order you around. At the Embassy, it’ll be even worse. And in Oslov . . .” He stared down at the schooner’s weather-bleached deck, unable to hold Tilrey’s gaze. “I can’t go back to that. I want us to be what we were to each other in that pathetic little dorm room with the sunlight on the wall. I want that always. That’s why I wanted to stay.”

After a moment, Tilrey’s hand gave his a furtive squeeze. “So maybe we’ll need to carry that room with us. Inside us.”

“It won’t be easy.” Still Gersha couldn’t look at him. He knew far too well how weak he could be, how susceptible to shaming and peer pressure. In Oslov, before Tilrey came along, he’d accepted abuses of power because everyone else did. After that, he’d clung to hierarchy because everyone else considered it vital to a healthy society, and besides, it benefited him. Who was to say his sudden enthusiasm for equality hadn’t been just another way of blending in?

_He_ was to say. He was different now. He clasped Tilrey’s hand, vowing never to backslide, and grasped the pendant around his neck with the other. He said under his breath, “My husband.”

“Husband,” Tilrey echoed him.


	28. The Rose

“We came this close to mounting a massive search for you, Gersha.” Albertine Linnett’s thin face was pinched with anxiety, but also with what looked like genuine concern. “You sabotaged government property—your tracker. Your actions arguably led indirectly to Sergeant Ardaly’s death at the hands of the woodspeople. If I report your story to the Council exactly as you told it to me, you could be censured.”

Gersha bowed his head, but he felt no contrition. Sergeant Ardaly’s death was a fiction to cover up his defection, and she hadn’t mentioned the three actual deaths he had on his conscience—those of the guardsmen.

Here in the conference room of the Embassy, where they sat facing each other, he didn’t feel much of anything except how crisp and stale the air was. Had this environment really ever seemed normal to him?

“I trust you’ll do your duty to the Republic,” he said to Albertine, raising his eyes. “I only ask one thing—that Tilrey not share in the blame. He performed his mission faithfully, as you’ll see when you peruse the letter he got from your father. It was I who misinterpreted his journey as a flight to defect and join the exile.”

The furrow between Albertine’s brows deepened. “Keeping you in the dark about the mission was our mistake. But I confess I’m baffled about why you’d suppose that Tilrey wanted to flee into the arms of my father. I was always under the impression that . . .”

“That he would rather die than be under the power of the man who repeatedly assaulted and coerced him? Yes. When I’m thinking clearly, Albertine, I know that, too.” Gersha leaned across the table, his eyes tight on hers. “But I wasn’t thinking clearly when I followed him. I was absolutely mad with jealousy and the fear of losing him.”

The part about Malsha Linnett wasn’t true, of course, but he couldn’t tell her where he’d actually feared Tilrey was headed. _Convey the emotional truth_ , Tilrey had said when they planned this. _That’s the important part._

Albertine was putting up a good front, playing the implacable authority, but Gersha had already seen signs of wavering. She didn’t _want_ to issue a damning report on him—not just because they were allies, but because she liked him.

Tilrey had told him to capitalize on her sympathy; it could be the only way to keep his seat in the Council and continue to help the Hearth. But in Gersha’s heart of hearts, something was more important than averting his own personal ruin. He wanted to be honest about one thing, and so he said, “I know you may be thinking the relationship we have is . . . transactional. You would be wrong. Tilrey is everything to me.”

“I understand affairs of the heart,” Albertine said, her voice wobbling a little. “In my youth, I was briefly a bit ‘mad’ myself, as you put it.”

“It’s more than that.” Gersha clasped his hands tightly on the table, blinking away the sudden dampness in his eyes. “You know him, Albertine. You know his mind. I know you have the acuity to look beyond someone’s ID card and understand when they’ve been . . . misclassified. If Tilrey hadn’t been your father’s kettle boy, he could so easily have been Raised.”

Albertine blinked. “Perhaps you’re right.”

Or perhaps not, because Oslov wasn’t a genuine meritocracy, not anymore. They both knew that, Gersha suspected. But it was safer to phrase it this way—to suggest, ever so gently, that Tilrey’s status was an unfortunate mistake. Anything stronger would be Dissent, and Albertine wasn’t ready for that. Not yet, anyway.

Still, Gersha could tell parts of the truth.

“He isn’t just my bed partner,” he went on. “He’s my indispensable partner in the Council—in strategy, in research, in speechwriting, in gathering support. He actually _likes_ politics way more than I do.”

To his intense relief, Albertine’s face relaxed into a grin. “I always had the impression you didn’t much enjoy that part.”

Gersha smiled back. _Please don’t let her be privately thinking I’m still mad. Let her be broader-minded than that._ “I wanted to be honest with you, Albertine. If you think what I’m saying is proof I’m mentally incompetent, then by all means, bring on the censure. I don’t want to pose a danger to the Republic. All I ask is that you concede that _Tilrey_ is as much an asset to the Republic as he is to me. Because I don’t think anyone could deny that.”

“You talk like a man in love, Gersha. But . . .”

Gersha permitted himself a head tilt and a winsome smile. “All I ask is that, whatever you report about me, you give him his due. If you choose to overlook my appalling lapse in rationality on this trip, I shall hold a lifelong debt to you, and make every effort to deserve your trust. But whichever way you decide, please judge Tilrey on his own merits. Will you promise me that, Albertine?”

Albertine dropped her eyes, a faint flush touching her cheeks. “I never considered doing otherwise.”

***

Tilrey found Duke Dalziel in the palace gardens, on his knees clipping his rose bushes. Although he was sitting in the dirt, his suit looked spotless, from the black velvet breeches to the starched white collar.

“Welcome back,” said the Duke—cordially, but without bothering to rise. “I was so happy to hear of your safe return. I was going to go and greet Fir Councillor myself, but my men tell me he went straight to the Embassy.”

“He has urgent business to take care of there.” Tilrey sat down on the low stone wall behind the flowerbeds and propped up his crutches. The walk through the gardens had been hard on his ankle, but he needed to feel out the Duke before Gersha returned, to get a sense of whether the man would be an asset or a liability. And, perhaps, to put him in his place a bit.

The woodspeople could so easily have killed Gersha. If they had, would that be Duke Dalziel’s fault for facilitating his flight, or Gersha’s for initiating it? There was no way to say, but Tilrey knew one thing: The Duke had alerted the Southern Hearth to Gersha’s presence on the road.

“Specifically,” he went on, “Fir Councillor is explaining his absence to Fir’n Linnett. I’m guessing you didn’t inform her that you helped him run off and desert his diplomatic mission, _or_ that you then proceeded to inform a group of . . . miscreants of his whereabouts.”

The Duke put down his clippers and sat back on his haunches. He examined Tilrey through narrowed eyes. “Gersha suspected, young man, that you had dealings with these ‘miscreants’ yourselves. And the message I received yesterday from across the lake suggests he was right. You’re on good terms with the Hearth.”

Tilrey had to admire the man’s gall. “So we’re being frank, your Grace? Because I’d like to know what the hell you thought you were doing when you sent the ‘phantom damned’ after Gersha, after you lied to him and claimed not to know they existed. Did you expect them to ambush him, capture him? Torture him for secrets?”

The Duke rose and fastidiously brushed soil off his knees. “On the contrary. Gersha was sick at heart because of the way he believed _you_ had deserted him. He was a drowning man, flailing about for something to keep him from going under. I feared his journey would be suicidal; even if he didn’t fall prey to the dangers of the route, your rejection might deal him a death blow. _That_ is why I asked our mutual friends to intervene.”

Tilrey’s blood pressure was soaring. The Duke stopped him from speaking with a gesture, then went on, “Perhaps I acted on insufficient information. But Silas told me you were friendly with Sergeant Ardaly. I concluded the Councillor was far more devoted to you than vice versa.”

Tilrey swallowed hard, trying to keep his outrage in check. “Your Grace knows nothing about us. The late sergeant and I were comrades, nothing more.”

“Forgive me.” Dalziel sounded genuinely contrite. “Anyway, when I say Gersha seemed sick at heart, I don’t just mean about you. He seemed to me like a man who was seeking, eager to expand the borders of his world without knowing how. I thought the Hearth might help him.”

Given how much a few days in the Southern Hearth had changed Gersha, Tilrey couldn’t deny the astuteness of that assessment, but it didn’t calm the storm brewing in his chest. “That may be. But because you ‘helped’ him, he could have died on the road, drowning in his own blood like your three guardsmen.”

Duke Dalziel bent to cut a rose with petals so dark it was almost purple. “I begged Gersha not to go,” he said. “I only helped him when it became clear my sole alternative was to report his erratic behavior to the Embassy.” He held out the flower. “Would you bring this to him? He can consider it an invitation to dine with me tonight in my private garden.”

He gestured over the hedge at a red brick wall that rose well above their heads, feathery branches spilling over it. “Fir Councillor and I need to speak face to face. I feel uncomfortable discussing his private business with his servant.”

Tilrey had no patience for rank-pulling right now, though he supposed it was as natural to the Duke as it was to Gersha. “I’ll tell him,” he said, plucking the flower from Dalziel’s fingers, doing his best not to snarl. “But if he chooses to dine with you, I’ll be there, too. I don’t want you spinning his head around with pretty words.”

The Duke looked Tilrey up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re protective of him. Do you really care for him, beyond what he can do for you?”

_Why is that so fucking hard for everyone to believe?_ Tilrey remembered standing in the sunlit conference room and pledging himself to Gersha, their hands tethered together. No one there had rolled their eyes or suggested the bond wasn’t real. Even cynical Celinda had drunk a glass to them.

He was starting to understand why Gersha had insisted on that ceremony. It might be purely symbolic, but symbols mattered.

“I do care for him, and not just what he can do for me,” he said, doing his best to meet the Duke’s eyes in a civil manner. After all, they seemed to share an interest in Gersha’s welfare. “And I shall convey your message.”

***

“Do we really have to deal with the Duke now? Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

Gersha paced in front of the tall mirror in their bedroom. His reflection, dressed in a spotless gray Oslov tunic and trousers, was normal and hateful to him at once. The collar was buttoned up high, the waist cinched tight. He was the picture of an Upstart at the top ration Level.

“I know you’re tired,” Tilrey said, sprawled on the bed, “but we can’t let this lie. We’ve got a full agenda.”

“One: Find out what the Duke hopes to gain by conspiring with the Southern Hearth,” Gersha recited obediently. Tilrey had given him a lengthy briefing on the carriage ride from the docks. “Two: Secure his pledge he won’t betray us. Three: Convince him the garrison need not be a threat to him. Four: Thank him for his help, apologize for the loss of his guardsmen, and offer reparations to their families. End on a note of friendship. Did I forget anything?”

“Just one thing.” Tilrey held up the pungent flower he’d showed Gersha earlier. “Did you know that in Harbourer culture the gift of a flower, and particularly a rose, is an act of courtship?”

Gersha’s cheeks warmed as he remembered the brown-and-orange flower the Duke had given him during one of their earlier conversations. “I think he just likes flowers.”

Tilrey spun the flower between two fingers. “Do you think I can’t see you blushing? Did something happen between you and Dalziel?”

“Of course not! I mean, not like that.” Gersha stretched out beside Tilrey, trying not to remember the warm tingle he’d felt when the Duke kissed his hands on his last night in Bettevy. “That’s not why I don’t want to dine with him. I’m just tired from _hours_ of talking to Albertine and trying to keep all the different lies and truths straight.”

The moment he’d mentioned it, he was sorry he had, because Tilrey dropped the flower and frowned. “Do you really think she’ll hold back in her report? She seems like a stickler for facts.”

“I don’t know! But, as I already told you, she seemed very sympathetic. Very receptive.”

That was true enough. Though Albertine was upset over the fictional death of Sergeant Ardaly, she’d shown great interest in everything the two of them had seen and heard in Resurgence. She’d eagerly pocketed the letter full of “tidbits” that her father had passed to Tilrey. And, most importantly, she’d promised to judge Tilrey’s conduct on its own merits, with the proviso that she’d interview him separately tomorrow.

Gersha hadn’t reported that part of their conversation. Tilrey would scold him for acting like anything less than a proper Councillor of the Republic, and a proper Councillor of the Republic would never have admitted that he owed his political success to his brilliant secretary.

But Albertine understood—Gersha was sure of it. She’d worked with Tilrey too closely to underestimate him; perhaps she even had it in her to be their ally in a deeper sense. For that, the ground would need long and artful preparation. But Gersha chose to believe in her, just as he hoped she’d chosen to believe in them.

“I don’t think she’ll outright lie in her report,” he said. “But she seems to have decided retroactively that my unplanned trip to Resurgence was actually an accessory intelligence operation. And a successful one, since my sharper Upstart eyes naturally picked out signs of the Colonel’s power consolidation that yours missed.”

Tilrey snorted. “Trust Strutters to believe whatever flatters you.”

“But our limitations are useful, aren’t they?”

“They are.” Tilrey slid over on the bed and rested his head on Gersha’s shoulder. “Back to the Duke, though—you know I wasn’t accusing you of anything, sweetheart. Dalziel’s an attractive man. And he seems extremely fond of you, to the point where he’s been borderline nasty to me because he thinks I’ve made you unhappy.”

“Nasty? How?”

“Not in any important way. I have to say, though, he seemed almost jealous.”

“Jealous!” Gersha sighed. “All right, so he did call me ‘beautiful’ once, though he called me ‘mad’ at the same time. And yes, he’s handsome, and I liked talking to him. But none of that matters now, and you know it. We were apart then. Now we’re—”

“—bonded.” Tilrey’s lips brushed his neck. “Yes. And we agreed that bond wouldn’t be a chain. If you like him, love, I won’t stand in the way of your fun. Remember how much fun you had with Besha?”

“Rishka! We barely know the Duke, and it’s too soon after everything else.” Gersha’s voice was steady, but the sudden bulge between his legs gave the lie to his words. Just for an instant, he’d imagined it was the Duke who was mouthing his neck while Tilrey watched with a speculative smile. The image lit an unaccountable fire in his belly. To show off for Tilrey, to display himself . . .

He kissed Tilrey’s tousled hair, hoping his lover—his _husband_ —hadn’t noticed the swelling beneath his tunic, and asked tentatively, “Would you like that? To see me with Dalziel? Or are you just suggesting it for political reasons, or because you think _I’d_ like it?”

Tilrey gazed at him for a moment. “I’m not sure.”

There was an odd look on his face, as if his own answer had surprised him. Thinking back, Gersha realized he’d rarely made any sort of erotic proposal to Tilrey that Tilrey hadn’t received with at least apparent enthusiasm. Saying yes—or politely deflecting when he couldn’t—had been trained into him. “Not sure” was new.

“Which part aren’t you sure about?” Gersha asked gently.

“I . . . don’t know.” The admission sounded like something Tilrey had to haul up a hill. He stroked Gersha’s throat with a fingertip, dropping his eyes. “I might feel a little jealous seeing you with him, and I might get turned on. And I might just turn off all those feelings if it’s politically expedient. Sometimes I do that, you know.”

Gersha captured the wandering hand and brought it to his lips. “And I wish you wouldn’t turn off your feelings, love, ever. But I understand. How about we just go and see what happens? If it feels right, it feels right.”

Tilrey relaxed against him. “Easier said than done. But I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, is it advisable for a newly married/reunited couple to engage in a threesome? I'm guessing most professionals would say NO, but then, these two aren't always the most typical couple. Plus ... it's midsummer, albeit not inside the story. :)


	29. In the Secret Garden

The Duke’s walled garden might be “secret,” but his servants clearly knew all about it. Tilrey and Gersha arrived at seven to find a low stone table set with a white cloth, china, and gleaming crystal and cutlery. On either side, velvet-cushioned wicker sofas invited lounging. Candles flickered in peach-colored paper lanterns that hung from small trees and aromatic bushes. Beyond rose the mossy brick walls, making the place feel like an impregnable refuge.

“Welcome back, Fir Councillor,” Duke Dalziel said, rising from one of the sofas, clad now in a gold-velvet suit that stood out becomingly against the green gloom. He took Gersha’s hand and raised it to his lips.

Gersha looked uncomfortable, but he said smoothly, “I’m so pleased to return to your beautiful domain, your Grace.”

 _Good, start with flattery_ , Tilrey thought, already back in political-strategist mode. He couldn’t stop making calculations: Did the Duke want to fuck Gersha or be fucked by him, or something else entirely? Once he got what he wanted, would he be more useful to them, or less?

 _If it feels right, it feels right_ , Gersha had said. But Tilrey didn’t do things that way, didn’t let his impulses carry him away until he knew every aspect of the person he was dealing with (and often not then, either). Part of him was irritated with Gersha for even suggesting it.

Yet hadn’t he himself coaxed Krisha to trust his feelings? Maybe he and Krisha were more alike than he’d realized.

The Duke turned to Tilrey, playing the part of the perfect host. “And you must sit down at once. I so regret that your time in Harbour had to include this ugly mishap.”

He pulled out a sofa for them, helped Tilrey to sit down, and propped his crutches nearby. His grip was friendly and firm, businesslike. _I’m not the one he wants,_ Tilrey decided, then chided himself again.

The Duke returned to his own seat. “I realize my garden has no lake view,” he said apologetically, “but I find it an excellent place to dine under the stars. And very private.”

His voice dropped a little on “private.” Combined with a meaningful look at Gersha, it was practically a come-on.

Gersha, in his usual innocent way, didn’t notice—or pretended not to. “I’m so happy to have a chance to enjoy your company this evening,” he said a little stiffly. “Tomorrow we must return to the Embassy, and our flight out is the day after.”

“So soon?” The Duke looked forlorn as he rose again and went over to a small wheeled cart that held an array of chafing dishes. He pulled out a plate of cheese and charcuterie and set it on the table, then followed it with a loaf of bread and filled their wine glasses. “For the sake of the aforementioned privacy, I am our inadequate waiter tonight. Is Fir’n Linnett so eager to get you back to Oslov, then?”

“Very eager.” Rather than elaborate, Gersha sampled his wine and reached for a hunk of bread. Clearly he’d had enough of diplomacy for the day.

Tilrey smiled blandly and filled in: “Fir’n Linnett thinks it best we debrief at home immediately, given the unfortunate fate of—”

“She thinks our mission’s a failure.” Gersha spread the bread with soft cheese and crammed it into his mouth, washing it down with a hefty swallow of wine. “And it’s my fault for being utterly mad, as you pointed out yourself, Dalziel. Tilrey did nothing wrong. Nor did you when you helped me. I deserve the blame, and I’ve accepted it.”

As Gersha spoke, Tilrey patted his husband’s knee without thinking, a gesture of warning and possession at once. He kept the hand there, aware of Dalziel’s gaze pausing on it even as the man assured Gersha, “You mustn’t be so hard on yourself. We all have our moments of passion.”

Tilrey took a conservative sip of his own wine. If Gersha was going to drown his guilty feelings, then he needed to keep a clear head, regardless of their earlier conversation. “And was it a ‘moment of passion’ that made you tip off the Southern Hearth, your Grace?” he asked levelly.

Dalziel’s eyes were a liquid walnut-shell color, pale against the richer brown of his skin. His brows arched expressively as his gaze slid over them as if to ask, _Who’s in charge here?_ “I believe I’ve already answered that question. I was concerned for Fir Councillor’s welfare.”

“And you thought his welfare would be best served by his disappearance into a den of traitors? Who might easily have tortured him for his wealth of information on their enemy?”

“Rishka!” Gersha squeezed Tilrey’s arm and took another gulp of wine. “Ranek’s my friend. He’d never hurt me.”

“Maybe not. And maybe he was just waiting to see if he could convert you so thoroughly that you’d reveal all your secrets of your own free will.” Tilrey turned to face Dalziel again. The sun had set, and the sky was turning violet, shadows deepening under the trees. “Let’s speak plainly, shall we?”

Dalziel raised his glass, looking amused. “Aren’t we already? Both of you are traitors to the power you claim to serve. That’s clear enough.”

“And _you_ are a traitor—”

“To my trading partner, which is not quite the same.” The Duke’s pleasant smile faded. “Surely you understand my dilemma, young man. I’m a mouse caught in the shadow of a lion, with a ravenous bobcat on my other side.” He gestured toward the lake. “I use my good relations with Oslov to shield me from Colonel Thibault. But how much trust can a mouse have in a lion? One can only hope that the lion becomes distracted . . . say, by a rival lion.”

It was pretty much as Tilrey had surmised. “So you nourish the interests of the True Hearth,” he said, “hoping that Oslov will descend into a civil war that frees you from the threat of conquest and colonization. Though, if that happened, wouldn’t you have to worry about the bobcat again?”

Dalziel said solemnly, “The Hearth has vowed to protect me from Resurgence should the rebels ever assume the throne of Oslov.”

Gersha burst out laughing, nearly spilling his wine. “Do you know nothing about us but our language? A throne!”

“It’s a manner of speaking.” Dalziel rose, went to the cart again, and began portioning out food. “I fear you’re tipsy, Councillor. We must get some nourishment in you.”

“So you don’t _want_ him tipsy?” Tilrey asked.

“Of course not. What I want is to have a civil conversation about issues of mutual interest. I respect your desire to protect your master, but—”

“I’m not his master!” Gersha glared up at Dalziel, who had just placed a plate of roast chicken and mashed sweet potatoes before him with the greatest care. Before Tilrey could think to shush him, he seized Tilrey around the waist, pulled him in, and announced, “We’re married.”

Well, there went their hope of seducing Dalziel into an alliance. Would he be confused, repelled, or just discouraged?

The Duke stared at them, a second plate frozen in midair. Setting it down before Tilrey, he said simply, “I have no doubt you are married, in spirit. I commend you.”

“Not in spirit. Literally!”

“Please, sweetheart.” _You’re acting like an absolute ass._

Gersha ignored Tilrey, barreling on: “Dalziel, I remember exactly what you said to me before you sent me across the lake. You asked me to keep my eyes and ears open and to judge you and your choices in light of what I learned. Well, I did. And I thank you for that, because what I learned is that the people you love are worth fighting for, far more than any system or principle.”

He paused to catch his breath, his body trembling against Tilrey’s. “Aren’t you going to tell me to shut up, husband? Am I making a fool of myself?”

Tilrey opened his mouth to say, _A bit_. But another feeling, warm and surprisingly satisfying, flooded his chest. _He thinks I’m worth fighting for. He embraced the Southern Hearth because of_ me.

It shouldn’t affect him so much, he scolded himself. But it did.

Gersha turned to address Dalziel: “In all your dealings with Oslov and the Southern Hearth, your Grace, I believe you have your people’s welfare at heart, because you care for them. Whether or not you expected me to return from my adventure, here I am, and I’ve learned a lesson for which I owe you my gratitude.” He pressed Tilrey a little closer, then released him. “And some part of my happiness.”

Nothing seemed to faze Dalziel. With a graceful bow, he resumed his seat. “It was my pleasure to be of service to you, dear Councillor, even if I lost three good men in the process. That part I regret.”

Gersha bowed his own head. “As do I. They died attempting to protect me, and I’ll always have them on my conscience. I hope to visit their families tomorrow and make some provision for them, if you’ll allow me.”

“I’ve already set up a pension for each family, but I think they’d appreciate your visit. You can serve as a witness that the men died bravely doing their duty.” Dalziel’s gaze flitted to Tilrey, then back to Gersha. “Before you left, Councillor, you asked me to explain my reluctance to host an Oslov garrison here. I rebuffed your question. But now, perhaps, you’ve seen the answer for yourself?”

“You’re afraid the presence of a garrison would lead to the discovery of the Southern Hearth, and with it, of your treachery,” Tilrey said bluntly. If the Duke thought he was being disrespectful, so be it. “And, playing a longer game, you’re concerned about Oslovs settling on your side of the lake. Colonizing you.”

Dalziel spread his hands. “I know you think I ‘rule’ this entire area, but in truth, I only have full authority over this city-state. The petty nobles who carve out this land between them depend on me to deal with Oslov and prevent a full-scale conquest. That’s a responsibility I take seriously.”

“And if protecting your autonomy means supporting the rebels against the Republic, you will.”

A shrug. “You’re simply too strong. When Colonel Thibault managed to appropriate one of your weapons, she transformed large portions of the rich state of Michigan into a wasteland. Tens of thousands of people died. We don’t want that here.”

 _Malsha and Besha caused that._ Perhaps they hadn’t known what they were firing that missile at, but it didn’t matter. A shudder gripped Tilrey, and he broke the Duke’s gaze to look up at the sky, where bright stars were pricking the velvet purple.

“Neither do we,” he said, letting his hand creep around Gersha’s waist. “Your Grace, we have a proposal for you. It comes from Fir Councillor, of course, not from me, but Fir Councillor has just returned from a harrowing adventure and doesn’t seem to be in the mood to—”

The Duke stopped him with a sharp cough. “I’m not stupid, Tilrey Bronn. It’s evident to me by now that where you lead, Fir Councillor follows. I can’t say I understand—I adore my Silas, but I would never allow him to do the business of governing or diplomacy for me. You, however, appear to be doing just that, so make your proposal.”

Tilrey felt heat spread over his face. Why was it so mortifying to acknowledge he held power?

But Gersha grabbed hold of his hand and squeezed, seeming not to mind that the Duke had subtly humiliated them. “I lead where he follows when it’s a good path, which it generally is. Go ahead, love.”

Tilrey proceeded: “ _We_ would like you to inform Fir’n Linnett and the Ambassador that you are ready to accept a garrison here, but only if Gersha takes charge of the project and choosing the personnel.”

Gersha shot Tilrey a panicked look; he had virtually no army connections. Tilrey squeezed his hand back as reassuringly as he could: _I’ll explain later._ According to Mirella, the True Hearth was making special efforts to recruit disenchanted army officers, with success.

Dalziel nodded, catching on quickly. “A garrison full of troops that answer personally to you is one I might accept—on one condition. The commander would need to report covertly to me as well as to his superiors in Oslov.”

“Done,” Tilrey said.

“So perhaps we’ve finally accomplished something.” Dalziel rose again, this time to light the glass-encased candles on the table. “My dear Gersha, you must eat. You too, Tilrey—there’s more to life than politics. You’re both so intense you tire me out rather.”

Tilrey realized only then how tightly he’d been clenching his jaw. Releasing Gersha, he bent to slice the chicken and took a bite. The skin was crispy and pungent with herbs, the potatoes creamy with a pleasant earthy flavor. The white wine was chilled, dry, and refreshing. Though the food here seemed designed to make him lose his negotiating focus, he’d miss it.

As the world darkened around them, all three applied themselves to their plates. The Duke poured more wine for everyone, and Tilrey allowed himself to drink a full glass, though no more. He had what he wanted, more or less, but he didn’t feel triumphant so much as exhausted.

At length, Gersha pushed his empty plate away. “When you say we’re intense, what do you mean, exactly?”

Dalziel nearly choked on his wine—was he finally starting to relax his control? “No insult was intended. What I meant to say is that you seem prone to emotional extremes, Gersha, while your partner chooses to show no feelings at all.”

Tilrey snorted. “Ironic you should say that, your Grace. If anyone knows how to wear an untroubled mask, it’s you.”

“Tilrey thinks you’re attracted to me,” Gersha said almost petulantly. “But I feel like you’re laughing at me, your Grace. Like I amuse you.”

The candles glittered in Dalziel’s eyes. “I’m attracted to you, yes, and I’m not laughing at you,” he told Gersha, then shot Tilrey a darker look. “But I choose not to mix pleasure and politics. That seldom turns out well.”

It was a slap in the face, a deliberate provocation. “It often has for me,” Tilrey said curtly, and took another sip of wine.

“Would you both please stop it?”

Before Tilrey could react, Gersha’s lips were on his—warm and urgent and surprisingly tender, given the way he’d just snapped at the two of them.

At first, Tilrey froze; his hackles were still up from the Duke’s comment, and he hadn’t expected this. Then, before he could think better of it, he was reciprocating, his lips hungry for Gersha’s. He felt the Duke’s eyes on them, and could only imagine the judgments the man must be making. But the world was shrinking to candlelight and a rough cheek against his and Gersha’s tantalizing advances and withdrawals.

Tilrey reached up, ready to tangle a hand in those soft curls and tug Gersha closer—and found himself being nudged away. The sudden absence of Gersha’s body was a gust of cold wind. He watched, unable not to feel a little abandoned, as Gersha rose and went over to Dalziel.

As Gersha sat down, only a whisper of air between him and the Duke, Tilrey nearly said, _You don’t need to do this._ And then, with a bittersweet pang, he realized that was the point. Gersha wanted to.

***

For an ice-cold moment, Gersha thought the Duke would push him away. Clumsy as a teenager, he reached out to trace the high arc of the man’s cheekbone. The candlelight made it a little easier, blurring the details, but he could still see the startled look on Dalziel’s face.

“You have a way of making me act the fool,” Gersha murmured. _If he doesn’t reciprocate in the next three seconds, I’ll get up and go like the idiot I am. One . . . two . . ._

And Dalziel moved. Quick as a whiplash, he took hold of Gersha’s roaming finger and brought it to his lips.

He kissed the finger chastely, then drew Gersha’s hand down the curve of his own cheek and neck and pulled him into an embrace. Every move he made now was unhurried, sensual and masterful at once, as if Gersha were a fine liqueur he was sampling. He kissed Gersha’s throat, then his chin, then his lips, and whispered into them, “It’s mutual, I fear.”

Those light kisses, combined with the tickle of Dalziel’s braids against his sensitive throat, left Gersha’s blood pounding, his body eager for more. He nearly groaned when Dalziel pulled him out to arm’s length and shot a pointed glance at Tilrey.

“You’re an incredible temptation, my dear Councillor,” he said, his eyes returning to Gersha. “But your secretary—excuse me, your husband—is positively glowering at us. I think he’s more jealous than he wants to admit.”

The tone was languid and teasing, yet the words struck a bolt of alarm through Gersha, even as his body thrummed with need. From his angle, most of Tilrey’s face was in shadow. Hadn’t he wanted Gersha to do this? Or was it the _way_ Gersha was doing it that was the problem?

“Rishka,” he asked, his voice quavering, “is that true? I want this, but if you don’t . . .”

Tilrey had slouched down a little on the couch, arms crossed. “You should do what you want, love,” he said in a tone that was utterly unhelpful—not rote or sullen, but not happy or excited, either.

 _What should I fucking do?_ Though Dalziel was no longer touching him, Gersha could feel his presence painfully near. He wanted to be closer, skin to skin, wanted the man inside him. But he wanted Tilrey, too. The need for them both sped over his skin in successive shivers, making his whole body feel like a single gaping orifice that desperately needed to be filled.

His words came without meditation: “Why don’t you come over and sit by us, love? I’d like so much to have you near.”

A moment passed. The grasshoppers keened quietly, as if they could feel summer slipping away. The light from the candles danced on the delicate foliage above their heads, while among the branches, the stars grew brighter.

Then Tilrey hauled himself up. He grabbed a single crutch, hobbled over, and seated himself on Gersha’s other side, leaving a hand’s-breadth between them. “Here I am,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his—dry, with a slight shudder. Was that dread or something else, perhaps even arousal?

“Do you two do this often?” Dalziel asked, sounding more curious than anything else. His fingertips ventured onto Gersha’s thigh.

Gersha swallowed. He didn’t dare look at Tilrey. “We do it only with people we like.”

Tilrey laughed out loud. “Or with people we hate. But sometimes it’s a thin line.”

As he spoke, his hand found Gersha’s other thigh and squeezed. Under his breath he added, “Go to him. I want to see you.”

That command, uttered in a husky undertone, was all the signal Gersha needed. His cock was rock-hard again, his whole body hopelessly eager. In a fast-motion fantasy, he imagined them both falling on him at once, tearing his clothes off, fighting for him, taking turns with him.

But he was in control here, and he would take a different path, a slower one. He stroked the hand Tilrey had placed on his thigh until it loosened. Then he slipped off the couch, knelt before the Duke, and ran an exploratory hand between the man’s knees, along the soft nap of the velvet breeches.

Dalziel reacted more strongly than Gersha expected. He arched his back and hissed through his teeth, his thighs parting. Beneath the hem of his jacket, he was already fully erect, straining against the seams.

It took Gersha a few fumbling moments to figure out a Harbourer fly. When he released the burgeoning organ into the cool night air, Dalziel moaned. “Sweet lord of the Light Web,” he whispered as Gersha tested its hardness with a few brisk pumps against his palm. “Don’t stop that.”

Gersha did stop, though, with the Duke’s cock pulsing frantically in his hand, to look up into Tilrey’s face. “Still yes?”

The flickering light distorted Tilrey’s features. But Gersha caught the telltale bob of his adam’s apple as he swallowed too hard. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

Gersha needed hear no more. He teased his tongue around the head of the Duke’s cock, swallowing the sweet-straw taste that reminded him of the hayloft, and then he slid the whole shaft into his warm, tight passage.

Perhaps Dalziel was surprised again. He loosed a cry and thrust hard into Gersha’s throat, clamping Gersha’s head to hold him still.

For an instant, Gersha was choking. Then the grip fell away. Dalziel said breathlessly, “Forgive me, Councillor. That was rude.”

Gersha could only shake his head, wanting more of the helpless way the Duke’s cock had jerked and throbbed inside him. When he made use of his tongue the way Tilrey had taught him, his reward was a long, plangent groan. Then he was taking the Duke’s full length again, flattening his tongue and forming a seal with his lips as he rocked back and forth on his knees. They’d be sore tomorrow, but he didn’t care.

Dalziel’s fingers tangled in his hair, gripping his scalp. They were just exploring this time, letting Gersha control the motion. The Duke’s lean thighs clamped tight around Gersha’s shoulders, and it felt good to be held so close—not just by the man’s body, but by Tilrey’s gaze.

Gersha couldn’t see the latter, of course, but he could feel it—a special kind of warmth that danced tantalizingly near, inspiring him to take Dalziel’s cock deep, to fondle his balls, to do all the things Tilrey would have done. _See what I learned from you. See how good it makes me feel._

He knew sucking cock had been Tilrey’s way of seducing despicable men without really giving himself to them. But he’d still taken a certain pride and pleasure in his work, and Gersha had learned that from him—the intoxication of being full to the brim, on his knees in a subservient posture, without ever relinquishing his mastery of the situation.

When Dalziel came, the roots of Gersha’s hair smarted from his grip, and Gersha swallowed the warm fluid as if it could nourish him. He rested there a little longer, drinking the last leavings as the organ softened in his mouth, letting his heart rate return to normal. He was still hard, of course.

But the important part was Tilrey. Gersha eased apart from Dalziel at last, resting his cheek against the Duke’s thigh. “Do you think you could . . .”

Dalziel’s knowing hand stroked his hair. “What would you like me to do, my strange and beautiful ally? What could possibly rival that performance?”

Gersha sat up; he would let the Duke handle all those ridiculous buttons himself. “Tilrey,” he said, and reached out his hand.

Tilrey grabbed hold of it. “What, love?”

Still the husky whisper that spoke of arousal—good. Inching out from between the two of them, Gersha planted Tilrey’s hand on the Duke’s thigh. Then he turned to Dalziel, whose generous lips were beginning to curve in the slightest grin. “Only if you want to,” he said earnestly. “But . . . I’d like to see you do for him what I just did for you. I’d like to watch.”

***

Dalziel was good at this. He was very good. Tilrey had half expected him to refuse Gersha’s request indignantly on the grounds that Tilrey was a “servant,” but he’d shrugged and slid right onto his knees.

“You’re a big lad,” he said in an almost clinical way, unfastening Tilrey’s trousers to release his already full-blown erection. “Especially when you’re this hard, of course. Oh, my.”

“Can you take it?” Tilrey asked idly, as if he were curious rather than worried about choking the Duke. He wasn’t here to seduce the man, after all. Gersha had already done that while Tilrey handled the diplomacy, their usual public roles reversed.

The Duke chuckled. “Would you like me to say I’m not sure, but I’ll try?”

“ _Less_ talking might be good.”

“Or perhaps I could start smaller?” The Duke bent his head. “Hah. Though _small_ isn’t the word I’d use for these plump family jewels of yours.”

Gersha was back on the couch beside Tilrey, keeping hold of his hand. When Dalziel began by giving individual attention to the balls, sucking on each and rolling it around in its sac, Tilrey groaned and held on tight.

When he had worked Tilrey up to a state of near-whimpering readiness, Dalziel withdrew again and grasped his cock around the base. “By the time I’m done with you, you won’t remember your own name, I think, let alone how to negotiate anything. And I intend to enjoy your undoing very much.”

Gersha’s hand shot out and gave the Duke’s braids a playful tug. “ _Do_ it already. Undo him.”

“Yeah, do it,” Tilrey said, an urgent growl in his voice.

“Your wish is my command, my dear Fir Secretary.” Dalziel bent his head.

The Duke was a huge tease. He alternated between agonizing slowness—up and down the shaft with his tongue, over and over—and flashes of bold inspiration. His tongue was small and delicate, like Gersha’s, but devilishly inventive and strong. He brought Tilrey to the brink several times and then drew back, clamping him tightly around the base. He stayed there patiently while Tilrey writhed and bit his lip to keep from crying out. Tilrey’s nails dug into Gersha’s palm, but Gersha didn’t wince.

Finally, finally, Tilrey could take no more. He grabbed Dalziel’s head, the texture of the braids new and arousing, and whispered, “Your Grace, for the love of all you find holy—”

“Finish him, your Grace,” Gersha commanded, “or I think he might burst.”

They moved in concert now, Tilrey setting Dalziel’s rhythm, until at last he lost control and drove home, deep into the man’s throat, and the flick of Gersha’s thumb against his palm signaled him to release all the pent-up need inside him.

He spasmed helplessly, head thrown back and teeth gritted. The pleasure was so searing and cavernous, so close to pain, that he cried out without inhibition and heard his scream echo between the garden walls.

And when the sensation ebbed and he returned to himself, Gersha’s hand was still there, holding him steady.

As soon as he could see and hear and speak again, Tilrey apologized to the Duke for his violence. But Dalziel, who was already wiping his mouth and standing up, said, “One doesn’t apologize for such moments, my dear young Oslov. Shall we have dessert?”

Tilrey leaned back against Gersha, boneless with satisfaction. “I thought we already did. Well, two of us, anyway.”

As he spoke, he eased himself onto Gersha’s lap, giving his husband’s straining cock an exploratory shove with his ass. Oh yes, Gersha could use some dessert, too.

But Dalziel appeared to mean the word literally. He pulled three small bowls from his cart, spooned something over them, and brought them over. “You must try my cook’s apple crisp. It’s always better to vary one’s pleasures.”

“It can’t be as good as the apple tart I had in Placid.” But Tilrey dug into the bowl, keeping his weight on Gersha’s cock all the while. “This should be against every law of civilized society,” he said, spooning up another bite to feed to Gersha.

Dalziel settled himself beside them and ate his own crisp unhurriedly, looking pleased with himself. “You Oslovs have a strange idea of civilized society if it excludes pleasure. Frankly, it amazes me that rebellion hasn’t torn your Republic apart long ago.”

“There are some good things about Oslov.” Tilrey ruffled Gersha’s hair and gave him another bite. “Tell me, Dalziel, how are we going to make your ‘beautiful ally’ come?”

He flexed a buttock to put more pressure on Gersha—who grunted, then said, “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here. I might have some ideas.”

Dalziel smiled. “As do I. First, though, tell me, Fir Secretary: Did I or did I not undo you?”

“You did,” Tilrey admitted.

Then he put down his bowl and eased himself off Gersha’s lap. “You know what else undoes me? When Fir Councillor here lets himself go and fucks me like I’m a sweet little virgin and he’s been waiting to consummate our relationship for years. When he holds me down and makes me feel every inch of him, and all I can do is take it and try not to cry out, and then he grabs my cock and finishes me off before he fills me with his hot, sweet come. I think I’d like to see him do that to you.”

By the end of the description, Gersha was squirming in place, hands fisted by his sides as if he were keeping them away from his cock by force of will. Dalziel looked cooler, but he’d spread his thighs almost imperceptibly as Tilrey talked, as if he couldn’t stop himself from imagining the sensation.

“How vivid,” he said, taking another bite and chasing it with more wine. “And where are we to perform this maneuver?”

“In that grassy patch between the flowerbed and the shrubbery.” Tilrey pointed, improvising.

“Ah, but then you’ll need to move to the other couch so you can watch. I’ll fetch your crutch.” Already on his feet, Dalziel beckoned to Gersha. “Well, Councillor? You seem so civil and considerate. Do you have it in you to undo me that way?”

Gersha rose to his feet with a stiff-legged, cock-heavy gait. “I can be . . . less restrained when the circumstances warrant it, your Grace.”

“Yes, I believe I’ve experienced some of that already. Your tongue is quite the filthy little devil.” Dalziel gave Tilrey the crutch, then beckoned to Gersha. “After you.”

Awkward at first, perhaps because Tilrey was watching, they circled each other in the patch of grass. Then the Duke darted out, pressed Gersha’s back against a slender tree, and kissed him violently, yanking his head back.

Gersha came alive at once. First they tussled on their feet, gasping harshly and grabbing handfuls of each other—hair and back and ass. Their legs tangled, and the Duke tripped. Now they were tussling on the ground, rolling back and forth—first the Duke on top, then Gersha.

When Gersha mounted him, Dalziel relaxed, a tremor moving over his body. He pushed his ass against Gersha’s straining cock. “You have something to ease the passage?”

Gersha reached into his pocket. “I came prepared.”

“Undress him,” Tilrey said, taking a sip of wine. “Keep your own clothes on, love. Make him squirm on your fingers.”

He watched, drinking freely now, as Gersha obeyed him. Dalziel assisted with the undressing, then rolled over. When Gersha began fingering him, he groaned and writhed, as eager as Gersha himself had ever been for Tilrey. “Oh, Councillor. Come unseal this virgin passage. Fill me.”

 _So the Duke is a bit of a cock-slut_ , Tilrey noted with satisfaction. He wondered if Silas often played Gersha’s role. But then his own cock jerked to attention again, and it took all his strength not to start satisfying himself.

Determined to watch, he dug his nails into his palms and tried to focus on breathing. Meanwhile, Dalziel was rutting up onto Gersha’s fingers, just as he’d hoped.

The Duke talked the entire time—sometimes in a murmurous undertone, sometimes so Tilrey could hear every word. He seemed to be daring Gersha to end the preliminaries and take him properly at once.

“I suggest you satisfy him before he bursts, Gersha,” Tilrey said, repeating the word Gersha had used.

 _How far you’ve come, my dear_ , said Malsha’s voice quietly in his head as he shifted his weight, trying to ignore the pressing need in his groin. _Two world leaders, and you’re giving them direction, making them perform for you. Aren’t you grateful for the education I gave you?_

“Not to you. Never.” He whispered it to the trees as the candlelight played on them, flickering over the entwined bodies of the Duke and the Councillor. Gersha was lining himself up now, fingers tangled in Dalziel’s braids.

And the memory melted back into the chilly night air as Tilrey watched Gersha take his first full stroke, throwing back his head and gasping like a man drinking a long draught after a dry spell. Their coupling was rough at first, then slower and more tender as Gersha reached around to give his attention to Dalziel’s own stiff organ.

That made Tilrey groan aloud, feeling Gersha’s palm against his own cock, but still he wouldn’t give himself release. Not yet. The night was still young.

***

They woke in the white mists of dawn, tangled together on the patch of grass, now soaked with dew. The candles were long burnt out, and birds made a ceaseless racket in the trees above and around them.

Gersha raised his head from Dalziel’s bare chest. Tilrey’s arms cradled him from behind, keeping him safe and warm. He peeled something from his cheek—a long yellow leaf shaped like a minnow.

“Mmm,” he said, letting his face fall back on its warm, breathing pillow. He ached everywhere—the grass wasn’t as soft as it looked—but it was worth it. At some point he’d let Dalziel “undo” him, too, while Tilrey held him steady with his hands over his head. The whole time, some sad, strange night bird hooted at intervals. By that point, Gersha was so exhausted that the whole scene was dreamlike, but he managed to stay awake for one last spasm of ecstasy.

Today he had an unpleasant duty—to visit the dead guardsmen’s relatives—but he wouldn’t shirk it. He was just glad he’d managed to grasp some fleeting joy first.

How many more nights would he and Tilrey have? They were both traitors now, and their return to Oslov could end in cells and torture, or in an exile more fatal than Ranek’s. Part of Gersha still yearned for the safety of the Southern Hearth. But he wouldn’t regret going with Tilrey—never. And if his current colleagues ever tried to make him betray his husband, he would gladly die first.

“Mmm.” Tilrey’s chin pressed on the crown of Gersha’s head in the way he loved. “Cold, isn’t it?”

“Not with you.” He reached back to capture Tilrey’s hand and brought it to his lips as Dalziel began stirring under him. He banished his dark thoughts. “Never with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being sooooo looooong, and I hope it works! (The negotiation certainly could have been longer, but I wanted to get to the fun stuff, so let's just say they'll work out the boring details later. :) )
> 
> The last chapter will be short, and I'll probably post it before Tuesday. Thank you for reading, kudos, comments, everything! <3 I have no idea how the story itself got so long (I was thinking 50k originally), but here we are.


	30. Gifts Before Leaving

“You saw my Nicky die?” Mrs. Overton asked.

Gersha nodded. He didn’t want to be here, in a leaning, smoky cottage with a chicken coop and pig-sty in the backyard, trying to decide whether to lie to a widow who looked no more than twenty and tell her her husband had died in some noble, painless way. He didn’t want to say that Overton had begged for his life and had his throat cut. Or that he, Gersha, had crouched beside him paralyzed and watched the blood flow. Or that her husband’s being on that dangerous road in the first place was his fault.

“Your husband fought valiantly against our attackers,” he managed, and then reached in his pack and pulled out the third of three ornate ceramic vessels that Dalziel had given him.

He had already delivered the first two vessels to the other two guardsmen’s families, who were settled closer to town. Mrs. Overton lived in the country with her farming in-laws—“to save money,” she told him—and he’d had a long coach journey over bumpy roads.

Each vessel contained ten or twelve packets of ground spices that were imported from another continent, and hence precious. “They’ll understand,” the Duke had promised. “It’s a useful gift _and_ a symbolic one.”

Mrs. Overton showed the most raw grief of the three widows Gersha had dealt with. The other two, older and weathered with passels of kids, had received his gift with stoic gratitude. She took it from Gersha’s hands and stared at it, swaying a little as her eyes grew filmy. “We were married just a year,” she said.

“I’m so sorry.” This would have been easier with Tilrey at his side, and easier still with Dalziel’s cultural expertise, but they both had other things to do. Besides, this was Gersha’s responsibility. “I don’t know what beliefs you have about the afterlife,” he said haltingly, “but where I come from, some people believe that your last moment on earth becomes your eternity.”

He thought again of Overton’s last moment alive, choking on his own blood, and cringed. But he said, “I believe that in his last moment, your husband was thinking of you. He spoke your name, I think. Matilda?”

She hadn’t mentioned her first name; Gersha knew it only because the Duke had told him. But he felt reasonably sure that, if Overton had been able, he would have died with his wife’s name on his lips.

Tears trickled down the young woman’s cheeks as she led him over to a blackened hearth that, from the smell of it, was usually used to burn trash. She added a few sticks to the smoldering ashes and poked the flames into activity. Then she reached into the ceramic vessel, brought out a handful of powder, and tossed it into the fire.

An odor filled the air, pungent, sweet, and piquant—it reminded Gersha of the apple crisp the Duke had served them last night. The girl threw in a second handful, and a new odor mingled with the first— _pine forest_.

Gersha bowed his head, familiar by now with the ritual, as she added three more spices to the fire. The smoke stung both their eyes, but he didn’t shy away, breathing in the scents of these spices that had come so far to reach them.

“May the lord of the Light Web keep him,” the young widow chanted softly. “May we all be united one day on paths of light, no longer divided by darkness.”

Gersha closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to his own conscience, asking for self-forgiveness—but not forgetting. He needed to remember. The sheer luck of being one of the “damned” had brought him alive from that bloody road to be united with his Tilrey.

He thought of Peony, still among the great pines of the Park, and hoped she liked living in the Southern Hearth enough to stay a while. Perhaps she would live there long enough to grow into a strong woman and return to teach her people new ways—gentler ones. Perhaps someday she would be a leader, just as she’d dreamed.

“May we all be united,” he repeated after Matilda.

***

The lake was always moving. Treading water about ten meters offshore, Tilrey felt it lap at his shoulders, embrace his naked hips, and slither around his legs in tiny crosscurrents as he paddled. He’d removed the crude splint in anticipation of getting a new one at the Embassy. But his ankle barely twinged in the water, especially with the special protective shoes Dalziel had given him—“The bottom’s all rocks,” the Duke had explained.

They were in a private cove that belonged to the Duke’s estate, thickly wooded on all sides. Hardy cedars with gnarled trunks clung to high cliffs, canting perilously toward the water.

“Not too cold, then?” Dalziel called. He sat on a rock ledge above the water, clad in one of his impeccable sedge-green suits. “I was afraid it might be.”

“Oh, it’s cold,” Tilrey said, laughing. Only the constant movement was keeping him comfortable. He ducked under and came up with a yelp, his face stinging and his hair dripping icy water onto his shoulders. “But it’s just right.”

After Tilrey’s debriefing with Albertine Linnett at the Embassy, a messenger had arrived from the palace saying he’d “forgotten something.” When he came out to the waiting coach, as requested, he found Dalziel wearing a mischievous half-smile. “May I steal you for a few hours while Gersha’s busy?” the Duke asked. “He told me you regretted not getting a chance to swim in our lake.”

Indeed, Tilrey had wanted to sample the “living water” Malsha had told him of long ago, so different from the indoor chlorinated pools where he’d swum all his life. It wasn’t disappointing him.

In some places, the water was so clear he could see minnows and odd zebra-striped rocks on the bottom; in others, brown silt caught the light. He paddled in a circle and faced the open water, slate blue above the violet-blue mountains of Resurgence. The whole world was muted shades of blue and green blending into a misty gray sky.

He remembered standing on the crown of one of the highest mountains beside Krisha, looking into the abyss. He remembered the deep forest silence around the Southern Hearth. _I want to stay here. If only I could stay._

But he had work to do at home, and he loved the taiga too, didn’t he? Oslov had its own bleak beauties.

He rolled over and let an easy breaststroke take him to the mouth of the cove, enjoying the sensation of being right at the level of the restless waves he’d watched from the schooner. They buoyed him up, tugged at him, caressed him.

His lips were getting numb, though, so he did a brisk crawl back, limped out of the water, and grabbed the enormous towel the Duke held out to him. “Okay, _now_ I’m cold.”

“I prefer canoeing, myself,” Dalziel said, indicating a rack of simple, hollow vessels at the edge of the woods. “But it’s rather a special lake, isn’t it? People who visit often want to come back.”

“I can see why.” Using a cedar to support himself, Tilrey toweled off. He couldn’t help noticing that the Duke was gazing off across the lake instead of at him. He’d done the same earlier, when Tilrey stripped and waded into the water.

“Why so respectful,” he asked, unable to resist teasing, “after last night?”

Dalziel’s dark eyes returned to Tilrey and regarded him neutrally. “You’re used to every man wanting you, aren’t you?”

_Pretty much._ He shrugged and tried to make a joke of it. “Are you suggesting you’re the bold exception to the rule?”

“On the contrary,” Dalziel said, clearly choosing his words carefully. “I bring it up only because I wonder how you feel about what happened between Gersha and me last night.”

Tilrey tugged his jerkin over his head. “It happened between the three of us, and I’m not at all bothered by your interest in him. I _told_ him to respond to it.” So why was there an edge on his voice? “I’m well aware that, between him and me, you would choose him. Again, it doesn’t bother me. You two have a lot in common. It’s nice to see Gersha getting some admiration.”

Dalziel watched as Tilrey lowered himself cautiously onto the rock ledge and began pulling on his socks and boots. His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t like it when I called you a servant yesterday, did you? Or when I called Gersha your master?”

“We don’t have ‘masters’ or ‘servants’ in Oslov, as you well know.” Tilrey bit his lip, suddenly unable to keep up the diplomatic pretense. “Fuck, no, I didn’t like it. You keep trying to put me in my place like I’m a nasty little opportunist who’s exploiting Gersha. Plenty of Upstarts back home would agree with you. And yes, I started out as his whore. I imagine you already know that.”

Dalziel held up a hand to stop the outpouring of words. “I provoked you, yes. But I don’t disdain you as you think.”

“Oh yes? And is that why you’re careful to point out that you’d never allow ‘your’ Silas to meddle in your political dealings?” Tilrey swallowed; he didn’t like the open bitterness in his own tone. “I understand aristocratic presumption, your Grace. I’ve lived with it for the past twelve years. It doesn’t offend me to be treated like a silly ornament. But don’t pretend that’s not what you were doing.”

Dalziel sighed. “For a while, yes, I thought you were taking advantage of Gersha. But then, last night, he came to me of his own accord. You expected and accepted it, but you didn’t orchestrate it. I could tell. You gave him his head, as we say of horses.”

Tilrey laughed, feeling some of the rancor bleed away. “And he put it very enthusiastically between your thighs.”

It wasn’t an unpleasant memory—in an odd way, he’d been almost proud of Gersha. But now he found himself considering the possibility that Gersha might genuinely _care_ for Dalziel, connecting with him on levels where he and Gersha couldn’t. Was that what Dalziel was suggesting?

Dalziel was grinning, too. “His enthusiasm is endearing. I’m deeply fond of Gersha, and I’d enjoy spending more time with him. But the point I’m trying to make is, last night is when I knew you loved Gersha as he loves you. If you were simply using him, you would have been more possessive, less willing to give him his freedom. I gained respect for you then—and for your bond.”

Tilrey looked down at the waves, feeling his face flush. He’d _felt_ possessive last night, but he’d never really felt that possession was in danger. “Gersha’s accepted my straying to other beds. How could I not accept his?”

Dalziel nodded. “I may not entirely understand the bond between you, but I wouldn’t try to weaken it, even if I had the power to do so—which I doubt.”

“No.” The word came out savage. “You don’t have that power.”

“No. And believe me, if I thought you were a negligible person, a subordinate, I wouldn’t be saying any of this. But you’ve earned my respect, Tilrey Bronn, and so I say this: Respect my good intentions in turn.”

Tilrey held the gaze. He’d felt a brief, sharp twinge when Dalziel had said, _I’m deeply fond of Gersha_. A new sensation. Until now, Oslov itself had seemed like his only rival for Gersha’s love and attention.

He thought of his long winter-night sessions in Davita Lindblom’s bedroom, sharing something with her that he wasn’t even sure he _wanted_ Gersha to understand. He thought of his close, sometimes sexual friendship with Bror, and the messy feelings that kept him coming to Vera Linnett’s bed even though he told himself it was just a political maneuver. If Gersha could put up with all that and still believe in his love, surely Tilrey could put up with whatever there was between Gersha and Dalziel. Hell, last night he’d reaped some benefits of his own.

“I hope we’ll have opportunities to return here as the garrison is built,” he said after a moment. “I think Gersha would enjoy spending more time with you, though I can’t guarantee I won’t tag along as a chaperone.”

It was the Duke’s turn to laugh. “And I shan’t blame you.”

***

“You’re checking your messages?” Tilrey protested. “But it’s our last night here! Can’t you do that on the flight tomorrow?”

“I thought you were asleep.” Gersha reached down to tousle Tilrey’s sweat-damp hair.

After reuniting at the Embassy a few hours ago, they’d meant to go to dinner, but somehow they’d ended up in bed. They’d spent the last hours of the afternoon in each other’s arms, their ragged breaths falling into sync as their slick limbs built up friction. They’d reached release close to the same instant and then, still entwined, drifted off to sleep.

Gersha had woken first, seen darkness between the blinds, and crept off to get his newly issued handheld. He was catching up on his mail from Oslov, which was, predictably, overwhelming. Everybody wanted something—his vote, his attention, his data. Even Besha wanted “to talk as soon as you land, in private,” though he didn’t say about what.

Tilrey pulled Gersha down into a lingering kiss, then sat up and stretched, yawning. “The sky was clearing at sunset, and I want to go out into the courtyard and watch the moon rise. Remember how scared you were out there, love, when we’d just arrived? How I held you?”

“Too well.” Moved by the sight of his husband’s well-defined deltoids, Gersha bent to kiss first the right, then the left. “Let’s dress and go out, then,” he said. “I mean, if you’re up for it—”

“With my fancy new cast?” A soft chuckle. “I’m up for anything.”

“Perhaps there’s a nice patch of grass out there.”

“Perhaps.”

Gersha kissed the nape of Tilrey’s neck, feeling blood begin to pool in his groin again. “Just one thing first,” he added, determined not to forget something. “One of these messages is actually for you. Vera Linnett asked me to pass you an enclosure, in confidence.”

“Vera?” Tilrey turned to face him, those wide blue eyes still sleep-bleary. “What does she want? You’re not going to get jealous of her, are you?”

“I was never jealous!” Gersha complained, clicking the cover message and passing the handheld over. “But you need to read it for yourself; she made it clear she doesn’t want me vetting it.”

“She knows you,” Tilrey murmured, taking the device. “Most Councillors would have taken that request as all the more reason to read it before passing it on.” He rubbed his eyes, peering at the screen. “It’s short . . . oh.”

“What?” Gersha wound an arm around Tilrey, pulling him close while resisting the urge to look at the screen.

His husband’s face had gone blank. He scarcely even blinked.

“Rishka. She’s all right, isn’t she? Do you think Albertine—”

“No,” Tilrey said. He tugged himself out of Gersha’s arms, his face still stony, his once-pliant body gone stiff. “Albertine doesn’t know about this, I wager.”

“Sweetheart.” Gersha took Tilrey’s face in his hands. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Obviously. But you seem upset, and if I can help—”

“You can’t, love.” Tilrey threw the device across the bed with surprising force.

Then, all at once, he went lax in Gersha’s arms, trembling all over. “I don’t even know how to say this. She says she’s done the standard genetic screen on her unborn son and . . . her husband isn’t the father. I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, my apologies for that soap opera-style cliffhanger. (Okay, maybe I'm a little sorry-not-sorry because I love twists. ;) ) This has been in the plan from the beginning, for better or worse; it's the reason we spent all that time with Vera in the previous story. I hope I can make it pay off!
> 
> Second, if you're still reading at the end of this mammoth story, THANK YOU! You are wonderful and regularly make my day. <3 Yet more thanks to all who kudo'ed or commented, and to those who gave me excellent story suggestions, general encouragement, or continuity reminders. Regarding this chapter in particular, thank you to Fair_Feather_Friend for giving me the idea for the swimming scene. You all rock. <3
> 
> **Future plans:** I'm going to take some time off and start posting the (shorter) sequel to this in the fall. At the very least, the cliffhanger will be resolved, though I have tentative plans to start a second leg of this, er, saga.
> 
> In the meantime, I've started writing some of Tilrey's backstory, and I'll be posting that, probably at wider intervals. It's dark, sad stuff with no direct bearing on the main plot, so just a bonus for anybody who's interested (thank you, Misty, for the suggestion!).
> 
> I may work myself up to getting an email address/newsletter if I ever decide to try to publish any of this stuff, but for now, find me [on Tumblr](https://welcome-to-oslov.tumblr.com/), and please don't hesitate to ask questions or make suggestions. Thank you again! <3


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